Goals UX | Laurel Wroblicky

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UX Design

REDUCING DIGITAL AMNESIA
Design for Social Good

Internet Users

Having access to search engines and generative AI at our fingertips has helped us answer many questions and synthesize disorganized information. With these powerful tools come changes to the way we process and retain information. A major benefit of information synthesis is the reduction of cognitive load that lower-level tasks have on working memory. A consequence is our reduced ability to retain information searched online. Studies have demonstrated a reduced ability to recall information when we know we can search it again. It seems we often rely on search browsers to serve as an external memory bank. By externalizing our knowledge to machines, we reduce the knowledge immediately available to us and, thus, have less long-term resources at our disposal.

Project Goal

Users will continue to use search engines and generative AI to reduce the cognitive load on their working memory, but they want to retain information long-term so that they can continue access it without the aid of technology.

My role

UX Design
User research: personas, journey maps
Wireframing
Prototyping
Content creation

AGILE DESIGN

Test

Design

Ideate

Define

Empathize

USER RESEARCH

PERSONA 1

Problem Statement

Marcus is a student who needs help retaining information he searches to perform well on exams.

Pain points

Forgetting important exam information
Easily distracted by links to other pages
Wasting valuable time

“Generative AI is really cool; I feel like it’s really helped me make sense of some complex ideas. The problem though, is that I don’t remember what I search. Or, I start getting really deep, like looking into wineskins used in Ancient Greece, but that’s not going to be on this exam, you know. I need to focus, but it’s really hard.”

Goals

Remember the information he searches
Focus his searches on information he needs to know
Test his content-specific knowledge

Description

As a student athlete at an Ivy League college, Marcus often studies on the road when basketball is in season. There is a lot of information that he needs to retain for his exams and future profession as a winemaker. He often searches information on his phone. He used to get lost in the rabbit hole of information presented with general searches, so has recently turned to generative AI to synthesize results. While it saves time, and presents information in a more manageable chunk, he isn’t able to retain the information for very long and finds himself repeating the same queries over and over again. Other times, he gets excited about a different idea that isn’t relevant to his studies and wastes time reading AI-generated summaries about it.

Marcus Jones

College Student at Cornell

About

Ithaca, NY

BS Viticulture & Enology

Student Athlete

PERSONA 2

Problem Statement

Viveca is a retiree who wants to remember search results to improve her memory and rely less on her phone to get things done.

Pain points

Can’t remember search results
Heightened anxiety due to her inability to remember important information
Spends a lot of time on her browser searching for things to do instead of engaging in activities

“I look up a stitching pattern and the next day I have to search it again. I keep making the same cake recipe for my little Signe, but every time I have to look it up again. And don’t even ask me about her safety, oh, I stress. I think to myself, Viveca, where is your memory? You should know this by now. My students remember their lessons better than I do!”

Goals

Remember search results better
Feel equipped with the right knowledge in the case of an emergency
Use her browser less for trivial searches

Description

Now that Viveca is retired, she finds herself most often at home, occasionally caring for her two-year-old granddaughter. She likes to browse the Internet for craft ideas, recipes, and to search random questions that come up throughout the day. However, she has realized that she often re-enters the same search on different days because she can’t remember the content. On more anxious days, she stresses about her granddaughter’s safety, consistently researching CPR and First Aid, but her anxiety thinking about a dangerous scenario prevents her from remembering the steps.

Viveca Larsson

Retired Teacher

About

Stockholm

BA Education

Retired

User Journey Map

Action

Task List

Feeling Adjective

Improvement Opportunities

Searches question

A. Type query in a web browser

-Curious
-Confused
-Anxious

-If this is something they often search, ideally they would remember the results and not search it again
-Can set a restriction to access the same material in a specified timeframe
-Pauses before results are generated, offering time to reflect

Finds information

A. Filter through results
B. Read information

-Interested
-Happy
-Relieved

-Pause before providing results offering the user time to reflect
-Assistance encoding the information for later retrieval (ex: mnemonic devices)

Clicks on other links

A. Browses other related topics

-Distracted
-Excited

-Assistance focusing on the information they need and reducing memory interference
-Check to ensure that previous information is retained (quizzes)

Carries on and forgets information

A. Ends search and resumes other tasks

-Oversaturated with information

-Afterwards, periodically test for recall

COMMON SEARCH ENGINES

Tools for committing information to long-term memory
No search engine has the option for users to indicate they want to retain information for a longer period of time.

Search engines and virtual assistants are designed to give results, not to help users think critically or reflect, but there is the potential to build this in as an optional feature
When prompted to, large language models, like Gemini and ChatGPT, can pause to help users reflect, create mnemonic devices, and create quiz questions. They are limited to answering specific queries; for example, they cannot send quiz questions at random or specified time intervals. The quality of quiz questions and mnemonic devices are hit or miss.

Restricting search results is not straightforward. Browser settings and plug-ins can be installed to control site access, but it is complicated to set parameters around specific queries. The idea behind SafeSearch could carry over to other queries users wish to filter or blur for specified time segments. This would require a more in-depth risks-benefits analysis.

As of now, users must be proactive about their study habits, critical thinking, commitment to reflection and memory training.

Integrating an option that helps users remember content offers the benefits to:

acquire and access information in both the short-term and long-term
think critically and reflect on their information consumption

Given that Google is the most popular search engine, I decided to base my design on Google search and Google Chrome.

Google
Bing
DuckDuckGo

Needs

Ideated solutions

Identify which information would be helpful to remember

Value identification: repeat search, exam material, survival

Time to reflect, critique, synthesize, intuit

Pause for reflection before providing an answer

Reduce the cognitive load on working memory

Offer focused search results and summaries

Help commit information to long-term memory

Quizzes, mnemonic devices, interference reduction

Break device-dependency as a long-term memory bank

Print suggestions, blurred search results, etc.

USER NEEDS

Remember

Study

Synthesize

Think

Query

USER FLOW

LOW-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

PRODUCT LOGO

I considered imagery related to memory: a brain, grey cells or matter, seahorse (hippocampus), greek goddess Mnemosyne, Coeus god of queries, marbles, a magnifying glass, and ultimately decided to use the letter “g.” My first iterations were a sans serif grey lowercase g, but this looked too similar to other companies’ logos. After studying Google's product branding, I used the two o’s in Google to create a lowercase g and incorporated the four primary branding colors. This new little g represents a new fictitious aspect of Google: goals.

Given the product focus on memory, I liked how the small g hearkens back to Google’s own origins as it used to feature as the company’s icon. The shape itself is similar to the infinity symbol; in this case representing the infinite capacity of long-term memory. Now, users can distinguish the big G, Google search as the information powerhouse, from little g, representing individual goals.

I envisioned this product living within Google Chrome as a separate application that interacts with Google search and integrates Google’s AI, Gemini. Since Gemini itself is brand-new and currently evolving, it helped to create this as an entity separate from Gemini for the aims of this project.

PROTOTYPE

For noncritical topics, users have more control over the results to aid their learning process.

Users can access their growing list of goals to continue their cognitive practice.

Once again, users can control the settings for different topics.

If a user repeatedly searches a query, Goals can suggest adding it is a goal.

When in focus mode, Goals will check in if users search an unrelated topic.

They can access the results as normal after taking a moment to reflect.

Users receive this message when they search a topic for which the results should be hidden.

Users can take quizzes to continue their practice and check their progress.

Goals helps generate mnemonic devices to help users learn and memorize information.

Edit the goal settings.

For each topic, users can modify the settings, access learning tools, a quiz and a printable study guide.

The Goals dashboard updates with a list of the user’s goals.

The first sample search result shows how Goals would make a suggestion.

From the Goals dashboard, users can enable it and paste links directly.

Goals is introduced with a description of what it does and why.

Google home introduces a new feature: Goals.

Next, users set parameters for the goal. For critical information, users cannot restrict results.

Goals can activate on certain webpages to search for potential user goals.

HIGH-FIDELITY DESIGN

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

Test with a representative sample of users.
Analyze the effectiveness of Goals in memory retention.
Study specific ways in which users benefit from retaining information they find on Google.
Integrate Goals with other Google products where it fits well.
Explore other features that would be beneficial to users.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this project was to challenge myself to design a feature for a pre-existing company that already has a model and expansive product range. Working within branding constraints allowed me to remain focused on delivering a product that meets users’ needs.

It felt rewarding taking an evidence-based approach from the field of cognitive psychology and attempting to build a solution into the problem source.