Google Next ‘22

Next, Google Cloud’s flagship event, has grown and evolved alongside the company, and in 2022, Google tasked Nerdery with the ambitious target of reaching 250K registrants and 1 million engaged developers. To support their 2022 business goals, the Google team focused on building up an accessible global program with meaningful hybrid events. This resulted in a revamped run-of-show, in-person events, and translation support for 11+ languages.

While working under an agile framework allowed us to move quickly and release features in small chunks, it proved to complicate things when it came to the registration rollout. Since the Innovators Hive registration opened after the general event registration, how might we present a user with an invitation to a Hive event if they had already RSVPed to the general event? Since users might be entering the registration flow via a link in their email or from a Google search, how might we address the need for an email address to identify if the user has invitations to sub-events?

I worked closely with our front-end developers to consider and account for several scenarios, from how to present a logged-in user with invitations to multiple in-person events on the Next home page, which we solved by prioritizing the display of RSVP banners, to handling unregistered vs registered states, which we solved by identifying and mapping out unique flows and interactions for each user type.

The Developer Zone was central to Google’s strategy of creating hyper-targeted experiences for developers. Conceptualized as a brand-new section of the Next site, the Google team envisioned games, puzzles, community event calendars, and resources specifically for developers. To encourage attendees to maximize their experience, we introduced an integration with Google Developer Profiles (GDP).

Built around a gamification system, GDP encourages developers to learn about Google technologies by completing code labs and watching videos in order to unlock achievements; for the Next integration, we wanted users to complete activities and interact with specific areas of the Dev Zone. We collaborated closely with the Google team to ideate around what badge-earning activities might be and what the badge notification experience might feel like. I co-led the UX and UI efforts for badging, and illustrated several badge designs.

As the core of the Next experience, the Live Hub serves as the “TV guide” and viewing platform for all livestream sessions. With the switch to a 24-hour livestream format for the 2022 event, including streaming in 5 local timezones and exclusive livestream content for different attendee types, the live hub required some rethinking.

First, we ideated around how to present different content types to different user segments. Our initial proposal introduced channels for each content/attendee type to emphasize the exclusive content and clearly distinguish which sessions were part of which experience. Ultimately, the client rejected this proposal, but landed on a visually similar compromise without the concept of content type channels.

While Google fell short of their registration and engagement goals for the 2022 event, Nerdery was able to help launch several new features and ensure the livestream experience and session transitions went off without a hitch.

Due to the nature of the live event space, this engagement required flexibility and speed; we had to iterate quickly to keep up with last minute pivots throughout the engagement. Our team was successful because of our close collaboration and proactive communication, which proved to be essential as we figured out how to most efficiently work alongside multiple Google teams, a 3rd party events management company, and a branding agency.