\n
That's it for this week! And happy Valentines day. Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate you 🫶
\nPing me with any feedback / thoughts 💬
\nSee you next week,
\nRosie 🕺
\nEach week I reverse engineer the products of leading tech companies. Get one annotated teardown every Friday.
Watch out — Gemini is coming for your Google WorkspaceThe race for AI-powered work tools heats up
It was a normal Tuesday. I headed to my inbox to send an email to a client. I’m just about to click ‘new draft’ when I get interrupted by a pop up: Gemini is here to help you save time Ironic, giving I have to spend time dismissing the pop up to continue with my work. I’m in a hurry, so I glance over the pop up and continue. Not long after, I’m replying to a support email. I see a little magic pen icon and default copy ‘Help me write’. A few moments later, I’m interrupted with what looks like an onboarding tooltip: Help me write
Get help writing a message from scratch, or refine what you already have
Weird, as I don’t remember opting into an onboarding flow… Spoiler: I didn’t. Putting it to the back of my mind, I click ‘got it’ and continue my task at hand. A day later, I’m in a google doc. Guess what? It’s here too.
I just want to get on with my day. But Gemini’s has other ideas: it has quietly installed itself into all our workspaces. Now, Gemini is everywhere.
And something about it feels off. Before we dig into this and why it feels so, so, so…..stinky (?), there’s important context about why now and why these tools. Google’s place in the race to AI workplace dominanceLaunched in October 2020, Google Workspace is a collection of cloud-based tools for work, including: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Drive and more. A whopping three billion people use Google workspace apps each month. That’s over 11 times the closest competitor Microsoft Office (at 270 million active users). The key benefit of cloud-based tools is that they’re collaborative. No more duplicate files, editing the wrong version or mislaid drafts. Until recently, you’d pay for AI as an add-on to Google Workspace. Now, it’s included by default and the base price has increased ~$2 USD per month. According to the Verge: Google is bringing all its AI features to its Workspace app … as it continues to race Microsoft, OpenAI, and others to build the AI-powered office suite of the future. The B2B Saas world is heating up with 100s of AI tools for work. There's AI scheduling tools, recording tools, note tools, slide creators and more. Ever joined a call with more meeting assistants than attendees? I have. This increase in competition is why Gemini has joined in. Apparently (according to Google’s own study) Gemini saves 105 minutes per week for customers, and 75% of daily users say it improves the quality of their work. Sounds great. However, what doesn’t sound great is pushing it on me when I didn’t ask. Also, when it’s really hard to turn off. This person on reddit needed to ask Google support to literally add a button to turn it off.
The changes in the tiers, pricing and availability of Gemini has had mixed reviews. Some love, much hate. What I’m interested in is the roll out: the product marketing, messaging, UI and UX that introduced it to us. We’ll run through the changes on by one, finding out:
Allez! First, a visit to my inboxLooking closer at the pop up in my inbox, it is well executed in all ways but two.
The pop up does well to:
However, what’s annoying is that:
And that last point is key. How a lack of an opt-out impacts usersWithout an opt-out we feel forced - cajoled even - in the user experience. As a result, users start to feel a sense of Reactance 🧠 Reactance is a phenomenon in customer psychology where users react badly to feeling pressured or coerced. Like when a parent tells you to do something and you just don’t want to — not because it's a bad idea, simply because someone told you to. According to Growth.Design: Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away their choices or limiting the range of alternatives. It’ll trigger an opposite response to what was intended, and also increases resistance to persuasion. It’s this theme of control that follows through with Gemini’s roll out experience across my workspace. Take the tooltip I see when drafting an email.
There’s no exit here, only ‘Learn more’ or ‘Got it’. This lack of choice again making me feel like I have no control, building reactance. What’s more, according to Ben Davies-Romano, Head of UX and Content, the use of tooltips in this flow feels unusual: As users, we’re expecting tooltips to be used as onboarding wizards. Yet here we see tooltips used for a sales flow causing a jarring feeling — as if we’re further ahead in the flow than we realise. We’re in a non-consensual onboarding flow in our inbox 🥴 You could argue these product marketing tactics are well-executed in terms of UI — great value propositions, conversational language, attractive modules — but it’s really the UX that lets them down. Wrong module, wrong place, wrong time. Next, crawling into my Google DocsIn Google Docs, I see the same pop-up template with different copy, (instead of speed we have the proposition of productivity). The demo is better here as it shows Gemini in an actual Google Doc.
Again, the copy is strong, the visuals are strong. But there’s something annoying about it. I can only ‘Learn more’ or ‘Continue’. There’s no opt out. No control. Then the Gemini side pane opens with a chatbot to my right.
I try to use it but I’m unable to — it asks to go into settings to configure privacy first. As a result, I fail to try it it out. Fail to activate. A week later, I see the Gemini logo moving - sparkling almost - enticing me to click it.
So I do. I see a side pane giving me info about Gemini, with the headline “Generate your next big idea with Gemini in Gmail, Docs and More”. I click ‘Try it out’ only to get to a paywall.
Turns out this side pane is identical when I tap the Gemini logo across sheets, slides and docs. Ideally, they’d be contextual to the workplace app they prompt from.
At this point, I feel all Gemini’d out. Before I’ve even tried the feature, I feel annoyed. I feel avoidant and frustrated. A poor conversion experience overall. So what I see next is very welcome indeed: some user research. AI user research in Google sheetsI was updating a KPI doc the other day, and see a one-question survey reaching from top to bottom of my sheet: What is the top task you would like AI to help you with in Sheets? Select one.
I click Applying formatting (I wanted to select more however it’s a single-select) then I’m put through to the next question: Consider the task you selected. How frequently do you currently perform this task? I then have a choice of five options: Multiple times per day / Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Less than monthly With my fish brain I had already forgot what I picked 🐠 — ideally the answer is pulled through to the next question for more valid results.
Following on, the third question is: How much effort (time and energy) do you typically put into completing this task a single time? With 5 answer options: Minimal / Some / Moderate amount / Significant amount / A great deal of effort Lastly, I’m asked how annoying the task is: How frustrating or annoying is it to perform this task typically? Again with five responses.
An interesting survey — I wonder if the research team is working out how best to position Gemini in sheets. Or perhaps what parts of it to allow users to trial. I liked this a lot — largely as it shows some introspection, some effort to put the user first. Because the rest of the experience doesn’t. Instead, it’s the race to get Gemini out and everywhere that dominates this experience. The verdict?Consent is key. Great modules can only go so far.What we see here is great modules in the wrong places. The result? We see a rushed go-to-market strategy that ignores how users might feel and instead goes for speed and spread of the feature across the experience. It's a risk for conversion to send people down an onboarding funnel prematurely. Especially in private spaces like their inbox where the feeling of being forced can lead to negative emotions and reactance. And, when there's little to no freemium experience for people to try the feature out. It's not all doom and gloom; there are pieces that Google have done incredibly well. Here are the positive learnings we can take away 👇 5 lessons to take into your next feature roll out
But — crucially — please make sure that you’re giving users choice to opt in and exit routes if they’d like to opt out. Just because the industry is moving fast doesn’t mean you need to surprise your users overnight by infiltrating their every screen and device. As if you do, the launch is more likely to backfire than not. You’re likely to harm conversion, not help it. Perhaps in the short term you'll see a spike, but longer term retention and trust takes a hit. The jury is out — do you like Gemini in your Google Workplace? That's it for this week! And happy Valentines day. Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate you 🫶 Ping me with any feedback / thoughts 💬 See you next week, Rosie 🕺 |
Each week I reverse engineer the products of leading tech companies. Get one annotated teardown every Friday.