Google Play | Developer’s toolkit | Project led

Unlocking sustainable growth for Google Play

I led a team of designers, developers, copywriters and product managers creating a toolkit to help Google Android developers build better apps. We travelled around the world twice: once to gain insights from real users, then to share our recommendations on stage.

As the number of apps in the world ever increases, the bar for success rises higher all the time. With so many apps to choose from (and many discarded moments after download) where should a developer’s focus be? A quick return up-front and high customer drop-offs or longer-term growth and a slow burn?

Google Play and Made by Many believed that if app developers were equipped with the right tools and resources, they could be inspired to build apps that unlocked sustainable growth that built healthy, lasting relationships with users.

A core challenge was delivering the project in the timeframe allowed (a key deadline being presenting our work at an upcoming Google Play event in Amsterdam) so we assembled a lean team of highly-skilled practitioners who could work fast and effectively. I led the project from London and around the world, researching and iterating as we went, creating a toolkit for developers, written by developers.

The final delivery was presenting our findings on stage in Amsterdam, Singapore and Seoul - an epic experience to sign-off an amazing project.

01. Ideation and planning

We started by selecting five app categories; downloading and living with a spectrum of apps in each area to learn their ins and outs, foibles and all. These experiences, alongside digesting Google’s extensive research library, formed the basis of several sketch ideation sessions. This was an iterative process, developing opportunity areas to test within, and hypotheses that would develop over the project.

02. Real-world testing with customers and developers

Going into real homes in Seoul, Denver and London was a fantastic glimpse into people’s lives and how they used their mobile phones. The thoroughness of talking to developers and testing in three markets gave our recommendations added weight, but travelling to each location back-to-back required careful planning to keep the team at their best.

03. Synthesis and concept development on the road

To make the most of our time in the field, we synthesised our findings locally before our colleagues in London updated the test materials before we arrived in the next market. This allowed us to iterate each concept in real time, learning as we went, and giving us an early signals as to how to translate our test results into an actionable guide.

04. Top rated course on Google Academy

The project culminated in ‘The Developer’s Guide to Growing Your App Sustainably’ and a top-rated module on Google’s Academy for App Success. The guide and module were written around practical steps for unlocking growth, demonstrated by quotes from our research, internal and external data, case studies and recommended design principles.

05. Around the world speaker’s tour

My colleague and I presented at Google Play events in Europe and Asia. It was really exciting to hear our recommendations go down so well with developers. These were: engage on the user’s terms, help users get back on track, and the counter intuitive disengage to re-engage. We ended each talk with a sustainable growth checklist, providing a practical guide for the future.