A Healthy Suggestion for Google

The Challenge

The Google Brand Studio reached out to the Masters in Branding program with the following brief: 

Develop a new cross-company program to help Google users maintain a healthy relationship with technology.

Research & Insights

After speaking with the team at Google to better understand the ask, my team and I began the process of framing the problem. How could we help Google define their future vision for users relationship with technology and where should they focus their efforts to have the greatest impact?

One of the key areas of concern for Google was that technology is that the rising use of technology is negatively impacting our health and relationships.

The key takeaways from our research were:

• The surge in smartphone ownership coincides with the marked, recent declines in sex. (Politico)

• 35% of Americans are focusing on devices as opposed to the flavor and quality of their food or even talking with family and friends. (LA Times)

• People are so used to communicating on devices that they are almost willing to dispense with people altogether. (Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor)

• Our capacity to hide in addictive technologies is making more and more of us intimacy-phobes. (Craig Malkin Ph.D., Psychology Today)

In addition to our desk research, we conducted interviews to better understand our audience. We developed the following strategic question to better focus our process: How can Google level the playing field between children and parents and help them get on a similar adaptive timeline?

So our question then became, how do we use Google’s technology to help people who feel isolated regain their intimacy?

The Solution

We proposed creating a cross-company program using the existing product Google Home called Flip the Script, utilizing the advancing voice assistant technology to prompt users to have more, better conversations.

This new Action is in line with Google Home’s current positioning as a tool to help people be more present in their lives. We can imagine that this would be useful not only at home, but also at the office or at school to help facilitate ice-breakers. During dinner time, for example, instead of everyone looking at their screens, Flip the Script would act as a facilitator to spark conversations. Based on their preferences, Flip the Script would prompt users with relevant topics and encourage users to delve in and get to know each other at a deeper, more intimate level.

We would launch Flip the Script with a special Doodle. To educate users about the importance of conversation, the Doodle would include an interactive feature to highlight current technology behavior, and share how conversation can positively impact their well-being.

Flip the Script is not limited to the Google Home execution. It can be successful in other Google products, especially in the platforms that utilize Google Assistant, including: Calendar, Maps, and Travel. 

For example, if Google incorporated Flip the Script into its travel apps, it could potentially help people travel together by coordinating and prompting group travel, allowing people to share experiences and recommendations in real time. Additionally, Google could help people spend more time together by enabling them to commute together using Maps, or even adding the conversation feature in the new Waymo self-driving cars.

Conclusion

In our research, we discovered that people are more intimate with their devices than with each other. One effective way of improving intimacy is through conversation. Though the development of Flip the Script, Google can help people have a healthier relationship with technology by prompting them to have more, better conversations. Additionally, this solution will help combat the notion that Google knows everything about you by giving the agency back to the people. 

This project was in collaboration with Josee Nahkle, Miguele Issa, Carina Sandoval, and Jae Young Kim.