Assistant for Work

Google Assistant — Lead UX Designer, 2019–2020 · GSuite, Android

Your work day lives across Calendar, Gmail, and Maps, and none of them talk to each other. I laid the groundwork for Smart Agenda, a proactive view that does.

Smart Agenda, live on the home screen — proactive context surfaced before you even open an app.

A work day with no single view

Knowing what's next in your day means checking Calendar for the meeting, Maps for the commute, and Gmail for whether the room got cancelled — three apps, no shared picture. Assistant had the data to connect all of it; nothing surfaced it proactively.

The existing Assistant agenda experience across speakers, Smart Display, and phone, showing a chronological readout of the first few calendar entries

The existing agenda experience surfaced the first few calendar entries, without prioritizing which meetings needed attention or preparation.

Existing Assistant agenda query showing a long calendar list without surfacing meeting agendas, attendees, or preparation documents

Agenda queries listed meetings, but did not make preparation context such as agendas, attendees, and documents immediately visible.

Leading a cross-PA initiative between Assistant and GSuite

I led design for a cross-PA initiative between Assistant and GSuite apps that let Assistant-for-Work consumers connect their work data to a growing set of enterprise actions, starting with scheduling and communication. I laid the groundwork for Smart Agenda — a personalized, intelligent calendar view highlighting what's next, what's high-priority, and what needs action.

Vision framing for Smart Agenda, a personalized and intelligent calendar surfacing what's next and what needs action

The starting vision — before any UI, just the case for a proactive agenda.

Animated scheduling flow showing Assistant proposing a meeting time using live calendar context

Scheduling with calendar context — one of the first enterprise actions this connected data unlocked.

Calendar-context explorations comparing meeting cards for rescheduling, alongside an Assistant scheduling example

Explorations for making calendar context visible when users choose which meeting to reschedule.

Ship the wireframe's logic, not its polish

Prove the concept in wireframe first. The earliest version was a single "current event" card — deliberately rough, so the team could validate the idea of a proactive agenda before investing in visual polish.

Layer in real context, one iteration at a time. Weather, commute time with live traffic, meeting-room conflicts, and a daily news briefing were added iteration by iteration, each validated before the next was layered on.

Extend the same thinking to the lock screen. I helped inform the framework for Android's Smart Space, bringing the same proactive, work-actionable content to glanceable lock-screen widgets for people on the go.

Animated Android Smart Space lock-screen widget showing proactive meeting information without unlocking the phone

Extending Smart Agenda's logic to Android Smart Space — proactive context without unlocking the phone.

Three principles that came out of the research

Gain trust. Users don't immediately trust Assistant, and expect to see visual proof, not just a confirmation phrase.

Build in confirmations. Users want to know that Assistant is going to, or has, fulfilled their intent correctly — every action needs a visible receipt.

Reduce steps and verbosity. Users expect flows to be fast and efficient, but choosing the wrong steps to cut can cause confusion instead of removing it.

Before: a multi-step reschedule confirmation flow requiring several back-and-forth exchanges

Before — rescheduling took several back-and-forth steps to confirm.

After: a single-step reschedule confirmation showing the updated meeting details directly

After — one step, with the updated meeting shown directly.

A work day with no single view

Leading a cross-PA initiative between Assistant and GSuite

Ship the wireframe's logic, not its polish

Three principles that came out of the research

Enterprise actions built on reusable patterns