Long-Distance Collaboration: Case Study of Google Fiber by Doug Fox

It’s a bit of challenge to design something that you cannot have yourself, and the only people that do have it are 1,800 miles away, but that is what Doug Fox has been facing with the Google Fiber team. Most of Google Fiber’s user base is in the Kansas City market, while the UX design team is in Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

As such, it made sense that the Google Fiber team embed a researcher in the community that uses the product, so that insights about how our users use Google Fiber could be more readily and easily collected. In this presentation, Doug will describe the UX design process he employs to make sure that his team is well-informed about users when making design decisions. This includes the tools that they use, the key players in this process, and best practices for collaborating between design & research.

About Doug Fox

Doug Fox conducts user research at Google to learn about how people use products or services, in particular with Google Fiber. He works collaboratively with the product, engineering, and design teams to infuse the knowledge of our users, so that they can make better product and design decisions.