How would you improve Google Photos?

Discovery (Describe product > Clarify > Select an improvement area > List of user groups & focus on one )
> Solutioning (Pain points > Prioritize, Solutions/Evaluation > Recommendation)

• Let me describe what's google photos? (Describe the product)
  • It's a photo service that allow users to store images with unlimited storage (if your images are 16mb or less of resolution) - isn't good?
  • It's main capabilities are
    • Search photos by people, dates, places and things without tags
    • Create albums, share content 
    • Edit images and apply effects
• Clarifying more (narrow down the purpose of question)
  • Are we talking about improvement of revenue?
  • Are we lookng for a new user experience?
  • Looking for Retention? DAU .. etc.
  • Are we looking to enhance user engagement? Yes 
    • Why? what is the current status? any observations ? Looking for more engagments that can bring more users .. 
  • "So, this is my improvement area, user engagement"
• User groups, on whome to focus on?
  • Casual Users 
    • Who are checking their photos on regular basis a week, 
  • Photophilie Users
    • Users who are crazy and addicted to take selfie or group photos during the day, outings, meeting friends .. etc. 
  • Savers
    • Just like to save their photos to view them one (that usually don't come :) )
  • "I'll need to focus more on photophilie users, the reason behind that, I'll empower their platform capabilities to make it more a daily routin and to build a habit to make G-Photos the one stop shop for all their memories."
• Pain points, pitfalls
  • PP01: I have many albums on social media (Instagram, Facebook...etc,) which I need to sync them with google photos, that require many steps, download pics, upload them on G-Photos. ()
  • PP02: User of google photos are not capable of having secured private albums, I'm a father of a family but I do have some photos that I don't want to allow anyone else to look into .. 
  • PP03: That leads to another point, how do I garantee that Google is not making any benefits or manipulation for my data (here is going be more personal)
  • PP04: Align with new image edit capabilities of imaging platforms (Snapchat, Instagram)
  • PP05: There is no location awareness for related photos that have been taken in different time. 
• Prioritize
  • I will prioritize these pain points based 
    • Cost of delay = user value + time criticallity + Risk Or Opportunity
  • Accordingly, I will select PP02, PP04, PP05
• Solutions
  • Solution (s) for PP02
    • Enable Passwords and multi-factor authentications (integration with Google Authenticator) for the albums that I need. 
    • Enable the option to hide albums based on secret questions. 
  • Solution (s) for PP04
    • Advanced capabilities that can sync up with Snapchat and Instagram, that will make the insistant sharing more advance and ease between different applications. 
    • Enable plugins that match other applications, open the options to integrate with other photography apps 
    • Ability to link the likes/shares of others applications on Instagram, Snapchat with the historical records in G-Photos.
    • Ability to share photo on google maps, anonymous share concept (getting likes... on google maps)
  • Solution (s) for PP05
    • Advanced AI algorithms to detect the similar places where this photo was taken and trying to show differences, comparisions ... etc.
    • Location based awareness of people who were in other photos and are in the same place around you NOW...
• Evaluation Solutions 
  • I do need to prioritrize the solutions based on their impact on user engagement (main goal of improvement) over duration
    • Accordingly, the green ones are my preferred options. 
• Recommendation (Closure)
  • With that, and in order to improve G-Photos, I will put my focus on advancing the features and capabilities that support Photophilie types of users to build a new habit that makes it the first place to share, store my memories. 

1-      Describe the product

Google photos is a photo sharing and storage service available on desktop and mobile app. It gives users free unlimited storage for photos up to 16 megapixels.

2 – Ask clarifying questions

Are why trying to improve the revenue?

Are we trying to improve the user experience?

Are we focusing on the mobile app or desktop version?

Increase the number of DAU of Google photos?

   3 – Choose a goal

Given that Google Photos is free, the cost associated with the servers that store all the images must be significant, for this reason, I would like to focus on a way to help Google increase its revenues. I would like to focus on mobile as most of the pictures are taken with a mobile phone.

4 – List the user groups

Power user →   Constantly adds all their photos onto the platform and check the app every day. They are the ones likely to edit pictures and or create an album with their friends. Most likely someone that has a smartphone with a high-quality camera. These users love to share pictures with family and friends.

Casual user → Check their pictures once or twice a week. Rarely shares pictures with family and friends but just checks his pictures.

Occasional user → Checks their Google photo app once a month. Will not share pictures, most likely an older person who is not as tech-savvy, or who has the app downloaded automatically on their phone but is not aware 

5 - List and Prioritize the uses cases/pain points 

We will focus on our power users as they are the ones that interact and spend the most time using our app.

Below is the list of pain points a Google Photos users encounter:

• That my pictures are safe (never deleted or lost) it is very important otherwise they would use another application to store them

• My pictures cannot be hacked very important to maintain my privacy

• My pictures are not used by Google (important because no one reads the agreement)

• Able to make high quality and quick edits on my pictures (very important to make sure they stay on google photos versus another app)

• The pictures I share with a friend or acquaintance are not shared to someone else without my consent (if we have a fight or an argument, you want to make sure the person doesn’t share your picture and mocks you online)

• Seeing the picture in high quality

6-  List of Solutions 

• Offer another layer of authentication: once the phone is unlocked there is not another security check before accessing the Google Photos app.

• Google Photos can charge a smaller fee such as $0.99 or $1.99 to allow users to edit their pictures with very professional filters (similar to photoshop, and other photo editing apps) and add AR effects to make them more fun and unique.

• Distort a picture when sent to another phone and image tracking → oftentimes users exchange pictures that they would not like to circulate over the internet, so create an efficient way that would not let a person share a picture they have received without the other person’s consent. Google Photos could add a tracker to a picture so it could be tracked exactly from where to where it was shared and who shared it

• Enable users to increase the quality and resolution of their pictures.

7- Evaluate Solutions

1. Offering another layer of security is  → easy to implement, high impact for users because they will feel safer against hackers, but low impact for revenues.

2. Improve Google Photos editing capabilities → medium difficulty to implement as Google would have to look into the most used editing apps and come up with their own add-ons on Google Photos. However, it has a very high impact on users as they pay for other mobile apps to edit their pictures. High impact for Google Photos revenues as they can charge similar or lower fees.

3. Distort a picture / and picture tracker → Very high impact for users as they would feel safer sharing pictures with friends. High difficulty to implement, need to use blockchain, and a lot of Research and Development. High impact on revenue as the majority of people would pay for such a feature

4. Pay to improve picture quality →  High impact for users that love to take photos as they want to have the best quality possible for their pictures. Medium effort of implementation as Google Ai, and the Google Pixel team have tools they are already using for image recognition. High impact on revenues because users would pay a fee to improve the quality of their pictures.

I would prioritize by starting to look at what features have the highest impact on revenue and the highest impact for users: First, implementing better editing tools on Google Photos that users would pay to use. Secondly, the feature to improve the quality and resolution of the picture. The last two features would be added later.

8- Define Metrics

In order to assess if the new features had success: I would look at Google Photos revenues before and after the addition of the new features. I would also look at the number of downloads of Google photos, the difference between prior and current DAU, and if the time spent on Google Photos has increased or decreased before our improvements.

9- Final Answer

As we mentioned before we would focus on the features that will likely increase Google Photos’ revenue, and have a high impact on our user base, those being: Improving the quality of a picture and add editing tools onto Google Photos app.