Episode 24: Reena Merchant on User Experience and Trusting Ourselves

Alright, howdy howdy everyone. Today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Reena Merchant, who's on the User Experience Leadership Team at Google. She's also the founder and CEO of OurVoice, which is a community benefit organization for strengthening our self-esteem and authentic presence. Prior to that, she was a senior user experience manager at Sony PlayStation and was also at Citrix, which makes— made GoToMeeting back in the day. You are listening to Distributed with Matt Mullenweg. Reena, we are so happy to have you here today.

I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me, Matt.

So you have a pretty— I mean, going from gaming to Google, what took you there?

That's a great question. Yeah, I have kind of bounced back and forth between the consumer and enterprise space in my career journey. It's interesting. It wasn't quite planned that way. I don't think I set out on the journey kind of intentionally planning for that to happen, but life just kind of brought me to these wonderful companies. And so I would do some enterprise work, some consumer work. Being in the gaming space was really fascinating. But yeah, what brought me to Google was just, I was really excited at the opportunity of working at a company like Google, which has such a fantastic culture, fantastic products that we try to work on things that kind of can bring better experiences and better meaning to humans and just the scale of impact too. And so when the opportunity came up, I was really grateful. And that's kind of how I came to Google.

You know, Google's pretty big. So can you say some of the things you've been involved with there?

Yeah, so I have been primarily involved with the YouTube Ads team ever since I joined Google. 3 years ago. I have loved my time with the team. So what we do is we focus on designing the consumer-facing experience of YouTube ads, and that's what my team does. And what that means is when we use the free version of YouTube, all the ads that we see, um, you know, in whatever platform we're using YouTube on— it could be on mobile, on desktop— what is the experience around those ads? How do they appear? How do we interact with them? And our mission is to create create a helpful, supportive, assistive, meaningful ad experience for users. And that's what we do every day.

How does user testing work for that? Because I imagine you might get some mixed feedback because some people might just not want to see that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that is absolutely true, Matt. And that is one of the reasons we want to do user testing and research frequently. I think we want to hear from our users. And we want to hear that honest, transparent feedback. And we We really want to learn from the reasons, you know, why, what makes the ad experience annoying? What makes it frustrating? And on the other hand, when people have experienced a good ad experience, what has made that good and what can make things better for people, for humans? And so user testing is so important and we really want to hear that honest feedback. And when we are designing new experiences, new solutions, Being able to get that feedback from users really helps us fine-tune and hone in on how to make things good for the user. So it's such a key part of our design process.

And because this is the Distributed Podcast, pre-pandemic, how would you normally work? Would you go into an office in Mountain View, or what was your normal approach on this team?

Yeah, so normally, I would go to our San Bruno office. So our San Bruno office is where YouTube is headquartered as a team. And I live in San Francisco, so it wasn't very far. It was kind of a 20-minute commute. And that's where we would go every single day. Our team has always been distributed. So though a large number of us are in San Bruno, we also have team members in our Mountain View offices and a presence in our Los Angeles office. So it's interesting because we were distributed in that way, but each of us would go to our physical offices most of the time, even though sometimes we'd work remotely. But yes, as you mentioned, uh, with the pandemic, all of that has of course changed.

And how is that in contrast to some of your previous career experience?

It's kind of been a different culture at each one as it pertains to distributed work. So, um, I think one thing that has been a common thread is just, I think, being at tech companies in general, um, there is always some element of and ease of distributed working. So, whether I was at Sony PlayStation or at Citrix or, you know, I used to live in Canada. I worked for BlackBerry and some companies there. There was always that ability to work remotely and we always did to some extent. But I did find that some companies, some environments, it was just easier or we had more tools or there was more of a culture around it. So, I'll give you one prior example. When I worked at Citrix, as you mentioned, I used to work on the GoToMeeting product. That was what my team did. And as we know, GoToMeeting is a product that enables remote communication and remote collaboration.

So that was like the OG one. It was the original.

Yes, it was the original. Yeah, I, I, it's funny, I used to work in the Santa Barbara office, which is where that GoToMeeting product originated from too. So because that was inherently what we did and what we created, and that was the design problem, the human problem we were trying to solve, how do we We help others, you know, communicate and work remotely. All the research we did, all the design we did was around that. So, it was just so deeply embedded in our culture that we would work remotely all the time and we would kind of seamlessly shift between working in the office, working remotely. We would look at different models where, well, what happens when everyone on a call is remote? How does the dynamic change when one person is remote but everyone else is in person? And so, this was just kind of one extreme end of the spectrum where it was just so natural. Natural to us. And then kind of at the other end of the spectrum, I've worked at companies like Sony PlayStation where it was also something that we did, but, you know, we had distributed teams, we had team members in Tokyo, and so distributed working was very important. But there were some interesting different challenges, you know, how do we work across time zones and things like that.

Having worked on tools in the space for so long and now using them as a consumer, is there anything that you really wish that the tools supported? —like one thing I've seen some do is they keep track of how much time different people are talking, which I imagine helps you make sure that you get input from everyone in the meeting. And I was kind of like, oh, that'd be cool if more things had that.

I think one thing that I've always— thoughts that always come to mind as I use these products is there's kind of the human element of things that come to play in face-to-face interactions or meetings. How do you read body language? There's things that you pick up in person that just just because of the nature of technology. It's just hard to kind of pick up on those nuances. Or, you know, you mentioned the time people tend to speak in meetings. That's really important too, because I think, for example, when you're in person, you can sense someone's body language. You can tell when someone wants to jump in and say something. And some of that is lost online. And so that theme of things, I think, has always— it always comes up in my mind. How do we bring more of that to these tools and technologies, bringing that human element in and enabling those interactions or those connections that sometimes are easier face-to-face.

So now, you know, design is one of those things that people seem to think needs to happen like around a whiteboard or in a room. And of course, that's not possible. I imagine you did some of that in the room in San Bruno before, but what's it been like adjusting for you and your team? You're right.

I mean, it's such a core part of the design process to be able to problem-solve, to whiteboard, to brainstorm in person. And it's such an interesting culture at Google because, on one hand, we have this ability, the tools, and the culture to work remotely as needed. We all do it. But we also— the culture is also very collaboration and relationship-driven. And so, so much of what we did was also face-to-face. We did do a lot of that in-person in-person collaboration. You know, sometimes we'd have workshops or design sprints or things like that. And we would say, hey, you know, we really think it's important to be face-to-face for this. And we would be there. And, you know, if there was something happening in the LA office, we'd fly down to be there in person because we said it's really important. And as you said, of course, we kind of lost the ability to do that overnight. So, I think it has been an adjustment. I think initially we, we just, we did what we needed to do to kind of, you know, roll with the punches, just get into this new way of working where we're, we're just online and just remote all the time. And I think as time passed, we've been trying to explore and experiment with new techniques, new tools, new processes. It's kind of process adaptation. How do we do that? Stuff.

What would be some examples that you've tried so far that have gone well or that have failed so people can avoid them?

Yeah. Um, so one big thing that we've been constantly iterating, uh, on is how to do workshops and design sprints online. So a lot of we— what we've been trying and testing out is kind of the format. So I'll give you an example. Usually when we would do, um, workshops brainstorming or ideation workshops as a team, we usually many times would follow this format where it would be a 2 to 3 day workshop or sprint. We'd be all in one office, we'd fly down, and then we'd kind of have this series of combination of talks and presentations and whiteboarding exercise, lots of Post-it notes as the design industry is very well known for, lots of whiteboarding. And so what we've been trying to do is, great, how do we adapt on that format? To work in this distributed model. So we've tried things like, well, you know, it's not realistic to keep people engaged in front of their computer remotely for 3 days straight. That's just a lot of strain and it's a lot of expectation to put on people. So maybe we should break up the format and maybe instead of doing 2 or 3 days straight, it's 4 or 5 half days, or maybe it's shorter. It's maybe 2 days only and just 3 hours each morning. Should we have the sessions in the morning because people are a little bit more clear-minded and able to focus in the mornings? What's the right combination of presentations where the attendees of this workshop might just absorb and listen versus how do we drive engagement and keep people engaged, interacting, and And, you know, it's easy to drift off sometimes if you're on a 3-hour call and just listening to people talk. So it's these types of things. I think this is a big one for us. And we've been iterating. We have failed along the way. We've tried some things that didn't quite work. How do you do Post-it notes? How do you create the equivalent of that online? We've tried tools like, well, let's just use Google Slides and we kind of give everyone a slide and they have this virtual Post-it note. Situation and they can keep adding their virtual Post-it notes to their slide. We've tried different things. Some things haven't worked as well, but I think we've gotten to a good model. I think it's been about balancing just how much time and how much attention we are expecting of people.

Do you have to use all Google tools or do you have some flexibility to use other things like Mural or something?

Yeah, we do have some flexibility. Mural is a tool that we have explored, and we do use external tools sometimes. I think we're just so comfortable with using Google tools too. So we explore both. We explore the spectrum and then just kind of see what works best for the particular situation or the problem we're trying to solve.

You know, one thing that's challenging is I imagine through your career you've received lots of in-person mentorship and things. So you're now a leader of many designers, and I'm sure there's some junior people. If I were like a junior UX person joining your team today, What would you tell me to try to onboard and grow even though we're not going to be able to see each other in person at all for perhaps a long time?

Yeah. And you know, Matt, that has been one of the most challenging things with adapting to this new environment. It's that kind of onboarding experience. You know, when I started, at Google, I was so lucky. Google has such a great onboarding experience. And I got to have face-to-face interaction with other employees who were joining around the same time as me. And so that has been a challenge. How do we create that experience for our colleagues? What were your favorite parts about it? Yeah, let's see. I think I loved— I still remember my first day of work. First of all, we get those Noogler hats. Have you seen the hat with the little spinning spinners at the top? Yeah. That might be my most favorite part. But you get You get one of those and you kind of— it was so well organized, you know, you kind of— they welcome everyone in, you kind of— you get your computer, you get your login, you get settled in. And I was in this room with— there were probably 100 people in the room. There were a lot of— I think they do them every week or so or every couple of weeks. And so everyone who's kind of in the same cohort starting at the same time is there together. And it was— my favorite part was just how— how not only informative it was, but how human it was. So one thing that I loved was on our very first day of orientation, the facilitator got up and she said, I want to address the elephant in the room, the biggest elephant in the room. Let's talk about imposter syndrome. And I loved that because I think all of us, myself included in that room, I think we were all feeling it because imposter syndrome is real. You're starting this new job that, you're really excited about and you think, how did I get this? Did they make a mistake? Why am I here? They're going to, pretty soon they're going to discover that they made a mistake in hiring me, right? We all have this self-doubt. And I loved that they acknowledged it head on and they said, let's talk about it. And we know you're all feeling it, but please know that you have no reason to feel that way. And we had a dialogue about it. And I thought how wonderful that we can just be so human and so honest with each other. You know, kind of take the cloak off. So I think that was my favorite part of that orientation. Hmm.

Is what do new Googlers go through today?

Yeah, so it is, it is different. There are a lot of these similar things that are offered online remotely, um, but you know, it is a different experience. And I think your, your previous question about especially being new and sometimes, um, hiring more junior folks, people who are kind of earlier on in their career journey, um, you want to give them that that feeling of support. So even outside of orientation, as a manager, I would normally spend a lot of face-to-face time with any new person joining our team. And so it is different. I, you know, things that I'm trying to do, trying to recreate that, you know, of course, all the time I will spend with new team members is online. But maybe it's doing more of that. Maybe it's just being available and accessible for that new team member to reach out to me informally at any time. We've tried to create onboarding materials that can just for the simple questions where you just need quick, quick references, like how do we have that readily available, because you can't just turn around and tap on the shoulder of the person next to you. So I think we as a team, myself personally as a manager, I've been trying to adapt some of our processes so that that support that new team members need can be more readily available online and remotely. And how about hiring? Are you all hiring? We are. We are right now. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that we are able to— I am not personally hiring at the time on my team, but there are other teams that are hiring at Google. And so grateful that in this environment, we are able to do that.

And is it still kind of people who could commute to San Bruno or wherever the office is? Or is the aperture opening up a bit?

Yeah, I mean, I think that for now and for the foreseeable future, we are all going to be remote. So I think the good thing is there is that flexibility kind of in the immediate term. I think long-term, for many roles, we will— we do see ourselves being back in the office and back in person with each other. We're looking forward to that. And so I think for many of the roles, that is kind of still the long-term objective and hope that, you know,, you know, for people that we are able to hire, you know, what is there— is there— are they close to the office? Could they eventually, with time, come back to be in person with us?

Well, we'll keep our fingers crossed. So, day-to-day, you used to see your team in person, but also work with teams around the world. Right now, you're all kind of working from home and trying new tools like using— was it Google Sheets?

What's the presenter one called? Yeah, yeah. So Google Slides, Sheets, Google Meet. We're trying it all.

Like, do you feel as effective as before, less effective?

Have you unlocked new things? Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. I think that it's been kind of a phased adjustment. I think initially it felt to me personally, it felt like, I don't know, are we being as effective? I don't know if we are. And We're just taking these tools and processes that used to work for us and we're just, immediately, what do you do in the short term? You just kind of try to apply those as is to this new reality. And initially it didn't necessarily feel to me that we were always being effective, but we have adapted and I think things have gotten better. We've kind of figured out, stumbled through it, is probably a good way of putting it. We figured out what works, what doesn't. So it is getting better, definitely. I think that things are getting smoother. I think we miss each other though. I think that's something that it's hard to replace. And so that is still something that we are constantly trying to work on and figure out how to bring that back in. But I think from a tool standpoint, things are definitely getting better.

And you also have this OurVoice platform, which— well, I'll let you introduce it briefly.

Yeah, thank you. Our Voice is a community organization that I launched last year. It's centered around the mission of making authenticity and self-confidence more accessible to all of us. So, it's a platform through which we try to bring resources to people on those topics. It's something that is very near and dear to my heart. It's very tied to my own personal life and journey, and I'd sort of been noodling on it in the back of my head for almost maybe 10+ years. And I think last year it finally materialized and took shape. And so, yeah, it's just, it's events, articles, resources. We just launched a podcast as well, just trying to make authenticity more available to us.

You have a cool guided meditation I went through on YouTube. How has that influenced you as a leader? Like, are you incorporating our voice teachings or philosophies into your leadership on your team or other teams? Yeah, absolutely.

You know, our voice to me is as much as it is about bringing resources to help others, it's my personal journey as well. You know, I really believe that we're all on some level in some way on this journey of discovering ourselves and, you know, confidence and being authentic. I think I think it's kind of a lifelong journey. So there's this platform through which I— my hope is to bring others resources, but I'm also on this journey too. So I'm kind of learning as I go. And I do think it definitely has been so helpful. You know, the things that I learn, the ways in which I grow, I am able to bring that back to all other facets of my life, in my personal life, and definitely at work. So in my role as a leader at Google, You know, I'm able to say, well, you know, how do I not only show up myself authentically and confidently, but also how do I create that culture for my team? You know, how do I create a culture and a space where others can feel comfortable being themselves, being open, being honest? How do we have authentic conversations and dialogues with each other? And so I think it definitely has helped me so much in that area of my life as well as others.

You say, "I should have listened to my inner voice." How do you run a team if everyone's listening to their inner voice and not to you?

That's a great question. I mean, I think that our inner voice is, I think it's the voice to me, it's like a thermometer. It tells us if we can hear it and if we can listen to it, it tells us what is the best way forward for me? What is the right thing for me to do? And I think that it's more kind of an, it's a feeling, you know? And then I think that of course we do exist within this external reality. So we exist within a work environment or a family situation, or we live somewhere in in a particular environment where there are certain protocols or practices or just— there's kind of the realities of how we function and how we work. And I do, of course, think we kind of need to stay conscious and aware of that. But I think that that inner guiding light or guiding voice can help us work our way through— it can help us navigate through that and figure out, great, in this environment that I'm in, how can I be myself? How can I be happy? How can I be— I both nurture myself as well as others and do the thing that feels the best for me.

When was the moment you personally wished you had done that?

Oh, so many, Matt. Big things, small things. I mean, I can think of so many times in my life, whether it's small things like where should I go for dinner or should I go on this vacation to this place with this person, but also bigger things like I honestly relationships, my past marriage, I used to be married and just navigating all these situations and circumstances. There's so many times where I think I just, I knew there was a knowing inside me that, hey, this is maybe what I should do or shouldn't do or the path I should go down. But as much as I am a creative, I'm also a logical thinker. And sometimes my mind would just get in the way and I would overthink and I would say, oh no, no, no, but that would never work because, or no, no, no, I shouldn't do that because, well, that's just— I can't succeed at that kind of thing. Um, and I would just kind of talk myself out of doing the thing that I think I always knew was right for me. And, um, yeah, it, it didn't always turn out the way I— it, it could have. But, um, one thing, um, of many— one thing that I learned through that is, is not to regret it when that happens. Because I think, you know, the, the statement that you referenced, Matt, you know, I should have listened to myself I think embedded in that statement is a feeling of regret, right? It implies that I'm regretting the decision I made. And I think that was the biggest lesson for me. So I would go through these things and I wouldn't necessarily always listen to myself. And then I would have these regrets and then I would think, oh, I should have listened to myself. And I think more recently what I have realized is that it's not about that regret. It's all of these things that happened to us, whether or not it turned out the way we wanted to, it's, you know, I learned something through all of that and it ultimately propelled me in a positive direction. So how do I not have that regret? And so that's something that I've also been kind of learning as I go. That's really powerful.

I mean, that self-forgiveness and self-kindness is often some of the hardest. You know, part of it, you talk about, you have voice that comes from kind of your mind, your heart, and your gut.

Do you want to clarify that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. So this is just kind of a framework that has worked for me in the past, and so I thought it would be helpful to share with others in that, in the article I wrote. But, you know, when I, you know, earlier in my journey, I, I didn't— when I would, when I would I would focus within, what was happening within me really felt in any given moment as this swirl of just swirl of stuff, swirl of thoughts, swirl of feelings. And if I had to make a decision, I wouldn't know how to parse through that. And I would think, ah, there's all these conflicting thoughts and feelings within me. What should I do? And I think over time I started focusing a lot on, well, how do I make sense of all of this? This that is happening within me. And I was able to break it down into these three components for myself. So on one hand, I could sort of sense, you know, as a concept, but also sometimes physically, you know, all these, what was happening in my mind. So in the mind, I would have all these, all these kind of fast shifting frenetic, sometimes thoughts, ideas. And not to say that that's a bad thing because I think also what comes in the mind is this capability to help us frame problems, to think logically, to really break things down. Okay, here's a situation that I'm in. Well, I could pursue option A, I could pursue option B, C, like that type of thinking would be happening in my mind. And then there were the feelings, right? So there was, you know, whatever topic I was thinking about, there was, well, what do I feel about this? So am I feeling happy? Am I feeling sad? Am I feeling anxious? What's happening? And, you know, so those— some of those sensitivities would kind of exist. And, you know, it almost felt like if I was trying to map it to a physical feeling, it almost felt like, well, those are sitting kind of in my heart. And those feelings are important too because it really helps us assess, um, what might be the emotional impact of me going down a particular path. And then if I quieted a little bit of the, the mind and the heart, I could always feel that deep down. And, you know, we say, well, what do you feel in your gut? I, I really could even sometimes sense it in my gut, this knowing, this just intuitive sense of, well, you know, this is what you should do, Brina. This is what you should do. And I think step one for me was just, it was kind of an epiphany when I identified that for myself. I was like, yeah, there are these sort of multiple components of what is happening within me. And then step two was, how can I get better at— it's like building a muscle— how do I get better at when I am feeling a lot of chaos inside? How do I get better at separating that out, parsing that out into these components. And I have found it so helpful that when I'm really trying to tap into my inner knowing, if I can just focus on what's happening on my mind, just quiet that for a minute, focus on what's happening in my heart, quiet that for a minute, and then I can really hear more clearly what's happening in my gut. And it's, it's helped me so much. And so that's why I had kind of wanted to share that with others. In that blog post.

Hmm. And is that what took you to the guided meditation?

Yes, it did. And I thought, well, what is the framework that I use and what do I tell myself within when I try to do this? And I thought, well, this is how I do it. And the hope was that if I could record that in the form of a guided meditation, then perhaps it might help others if they wanted to try and apply a similar framework for themselves. Yourself.

You know, one of the things that came up in a previous podcast with the neuroscientist Adam Gazali was that people's internal dialogue can often be really negative. So how do you navigate that, that when you're listening to yourself, it might not be the most positive thing?

Yeah, it's so true. It happens all the time. I think for me, what is really helpful is, well, initially when I would tap in and when I would hear my inner negative dialogue, I I would say I would be upset with myself because I would immediately identify it as negative dialogue. And I would immediately identify it as, well, I don't, I don't want to have that negative inner dialogue. I don't want to think this way about myself or about some external thing. And I would perceive it negatively in that way. And I would be upset with myself on some level for allowing that negative inner dialogue to persist. And I would immediately try to shut it down because, well, it's bad and I shouldn't be thinking this way. And I think what I've realized over time is that, that didn't help me. That never helped me because the more I would do that, the more I would reject it, the more I would frustrate my— I would create even more negativity within myself by doing that. So it was kind of a vicious cycle. And what I've been doing What has been helpful for me, what I've realized is what works better is honoring it. It's okay to have negative inner dialogue. I mean, we all do. We're all human, whether it's self-doubt, whether it's whatever it is. How can I honor it? How can I say, hey, it's okay. It's okay. It's not my fault. It's not bad that it's there. It's okay. You know, let's take self-doubt for an example. It's okay, self-doubt. I see you. You're there. It's okay. But— "Maybe you can have a seat at the side for a moment because I don't need you right now. We're good." And kind of pushing forward in a more positive, constructive, holistic direction in spite of that negative inner dialogue. So I think that's been the biggest learning and journey for— it's an ongoing journey. I mean, I still sometimes fall prey to that thing where I criticize myself for even having that negativity within, But I think just, it's okay. And how do we be kind to ourselves? Yeah. What you try—

what you reject actually becomes stronger. What you try to avoid actually is more present.

Yes, exactly. I totally agree.

So there's kind of that surrender and acceptance that seem to be an antidote, which is a little paradoxical because you were getting rid of the thing by not trying to get rid of the thing.

Exactly.

How does that apply to design?

Design is all about, you know, it's all about understanding. We want to understand our users. We want to understand humans. Design is all about creating experiences, solutions, products, services, whatever we're designing, to support human needs, desires, goals. And I think that as designers, being able to both both being able to understand others, I think, to be able to empathize with others. I think that it helps to have kind of this understanding and a framework, whatever framework works for us, but some kind of framework which allows us to kind of quiet the noise and understand others better. And I think if we have a better understanding of ourselves and we have built that capability of kind of tapping in and getting to the core of who I am, I think that helps us better understand others too. And so I think it really does relate and it helps me in my design work in that way.

Can you be a good designer without empathy?

I think you can be great at the craft. I think, you know, I am just looking at myself. I think that if I didn't have empathy, I'd still have the tools, I'd still know the methods, you could still apply that craft in hopefully a strong way. But I think that design is about so much more than just, just that, right? It's so much more than technically applying a tool or a capability or a practice. It really— I truly believe that design at its core is about humans. It is about delivering meaning to humans. So I, I think that if we don't have that empathy, It's really hard to do that. I think that that's such a core part of what we do. And I think without that, it's a disservice to ourselves and what we can do as designers. And it's a disservice to others because we can do so much more for other people through our craft if we are empathetic.

Yeah, you affect a lot of the world. Well, that sounds like an excellent thing to go to the earlier question for. What you might say to someone new joining your team.

Yes, absolutely. I am going to make a note of that because I think that I would love to share that with our next new team member.

Well, thank you so much for sharing it with the Distributed audience. And also thank you for the work you're doing, you know, above and beyond your day job to try to affect people's lives in a positive way. This is Distributed with Matt Mullenweg, the Distributed Podcasts at distributed.blog. Reena, thank you so much for joining today, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do in the future.

Thank you so much for having me, Matt. I really enjoyed our conversation.