Saturday, February 1st, 2014

Design Jam Problem: How to Increase the Visibility of Google Wallet

Last night SOCHI (no, not the Russian city hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, this SOCHI) sponsored a Design Jam with Google recruiters who were in town for the UM College of Engineering Career Fair.  Of the three design jams I have participated in, this might have been my favorite so far (though the one with CTools – a future blog post in its own right – is a close runner-up), partially because the design problem and the design constraints were simply stated. The product we were working on – Google Wallet – will be soon be getting some new functionality which we got a preview of. Wanting to raise the profile of Google Wallet, Google asked us how we would make it more visible to the common Google user.

My collaborators for the Design Jam were Colin Drayton and Iman Yeckehzaare. For some reason I don’t quite recall, we got to thinking about Amazon’s 1-Click button.

By clicking on this button, an Amazon shopper skips the whole checkout process – the item just gets sent to their default shipping address and their default credit card gets charged. This provides an excellent functionality but it’s limited to Amazon’s offerings. This is where we thought Google Wallet could intervene and offer some differentiation on the market.

What if Google Wallet offered 1-Click-type functionality – not just on one site, but the whole Internet? On any retail site you could just click the Google Wallet icon and have the item shipped to you without having to go through a checkout process or sharing information with a retailer. On any Google+ page you can send that person cash with just one click.

Ok, good enough so far, but the really interesting part would be how this would be implemented – by leveraging Google’s two most visible properties: Google Chrome and Google Search. At first we considered an extension that could be installed on the Chrome browser – but what if Google Wallet was embedded into the Chrome browser and a Google Wallet icon would show up on the search bar for any page where there was a product you could buy or a person you could pay. Sort of like this:

 

 

Google Wallet would pop up a “Quick Buy” button on any site where Google had a pre-existing relationship with a retailer to use Google Wallet as a form of payment. Or for shopping sites that didn’t have a pre-existing relationship with Google (and this would be the truly radical move), Google Wallet could have an Autofill functionality that would simply complete the shopping process for you.

On a Google+ page this “Quick Buy” button could become a “Quick Cash” button for sending cash to a friend – on a nonprofit’s Google+ page it could become “Quick Donate.” For more variations on this idea, check out our original Design Jam presentation.

Changing the Conversation: Google as Gatekeeper of Private Information

One of the design constraints for the Design Jam was to keep in mind that people have become a bit suspicious of Google and sharing financial information through Google Wallet might increase this suspicion/anxiety. What I like about our proposition is that the way Google Wallet works here could change the conversation: Google Wallet’s ability to interact automatically with retailers on behalf of the user, protecting their information. This is something that Apple has done with Newstand subscriptions, letting users voluntarily decide to share or not share their information with the publications they subscribe to. The more Google can be seen as a gatekeeper of private information, the more it can shed its image as a voracious hoarder of personal data that we have to be careful of trusting.

A big thank you to Nancy Douyon, Dr. Soodeh Montazeri and SOCHI for making this Design Jam happen!

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