Author Archives: Molly

Help Me Out: How can I organize my Chrome tabs?

Welcome to our new advice series, Help Me Out, where we ask expert Googlers to share their best tips for navigating common tech conundrums. Whether you're trying to achieve inbox zero or want to get a handle on all those Chrome tabs, we've got a Googler who can help you out.

Help me out!

I come to you in need of Chrome tabs tips. First, you should know that Ilove my Chrome tabs. Exhibit A: I apparently have 42 Chrome tabs open on my work laptop right now. Exhibit B: Rumor has it I have 83 additional Chrome tabs open on my personal laptop. You could say closing my tabs feels…taboo.

There’s just so much internet to explore — so many fascinating rabbit holes to fall down with a simple search. Sometimes I’ll bookmark all open tabs into folders that are too vaguely named to be useful. What differentiates “New Folder 1” from “New Folder 2?” No one can say. I’m never going to give up my tabs, but I definitely could use some tidying tips.

—Keepin' tabs on my tabs

Dear Keepin’ tabs on my tabs,

Coming to you live from a tab that’s buried amongst its kind! I confess that I, too, am a tab enthusiast. Since I’ve got the same issue, I decided to ask a Chrome expert to help me help you.

Edward Jung is a UX engineer who works on the Chrome team and describes himself as a “tabs maximalist.” “I’m using an extension right now that tells me I have 250 tabs open,” he says. The difference between us and Edward? He’s got a solid tabs organization system on his side. Edward says in the 12 or so years he’s been working at Google, he’s come up with various strategies to cope with his tabs use. And his tips can help us, too.

First, something that’s helpful to know if you accidentally close tabs: You can always restore them (although Edward says whenever this happens he takes it as a sign from the universe that it’s time to let those tabs go and start over!).

But that doesn’t quite solve your specific issue about organization. For starters, Edward suggests using Tab Groups. “I helped design Chrome Tab Groups because tab organization was a problem I was experiencing,” he says. This feature allows you to group various tabs together, so if you want to open a handful of tabs all at once related to a subject in particular, a project you’re working on or even something like a trip you’re planning, you just need to find that label and everything will open simultaneously. Plus, after grouping, the tabs collapse together, keeping your tab strip less cluttered. You can even add color-coding or use an emoji when you’re naming a Tab Group, which helps you immediately identify it.

A screenshot of a Chrome browser with two tabs open. On the first tab, the arrow is right-clicking to reveal a list of options; the option "add tab to new group" is selected.

Right click a tab and select “Add tab to new group” to find grouping options, including color-coding.

If you have multiple windows full of tabs, a great way to instantly recognize which tabs are in which windows is to use Chrome’s window naming feature; you can access this by right-clicking on the empty space in the tab strip and selecting “name window.” “So if you have a window open that has various tabs related to ‘project x,’ you can name the window ‘project x.’ That way you don’t have to remember what a tab was related to, and in your toolbar you’ll see the label, not the name of some random website or document,” Edward explains.

A zoomed-in screenshot of a Chrome tab where a right-click has revealed pop-up of a list of options including "Name window."

Right-clicking on the empty space at the top of your browser window will give you the option to name a window.

Now that you’ve got a way to organize and identify your many tabs, you still need a way to search them. Edward says there’s a method for that, too: You simply hit the little “down” arrow at the top right of your Chrome browser and type in what you’re looking for, or scroll down the list of what’s open. If you have too many tabs open, you can close some right from this list. Another incredibly easy way to search your tabs? Start typing whatever it is you’re looking for into the URL bar — you don’t need the complete phrase either; if it's a tab you’ve used recently or often, Chrome will fill in the rest. And if you already have the tab open somewhere, Chrome will prompt you to switch to that one instead of opening a duplicate.

A screenshot of a downward facing "v" option on the Chrome browser being selected to reveal the option to search tabs.

Can't find a tab? Cut to the chase by clicking on this arrow and searching for it directly.

Hopefully this helps you organize your tabs better! I’ll leave you with this excellent metaphor from Edward, who likens good tab organization to a utensils drawer. “Youcould just throw everything in a drawer, but it would be chaos! This is like using the organizers so everything has a recognized place, and you easily know where to find what, right when you look at it.”

Browse on,

Molly

Source: Google Chrome


14 fun details I noticed in my first 14 days with a Pixel

After nearly three years of working at Google, I’ve definitely leaned into all kinds of “Googley” things. I got doogler bandanas for my dogs. I’ve become a bit of a Chrome OS power user (no brag). And you’ll never be able to pry my Pixel Buds from me (unless it’s because I’m upgrading them…more on that later). But there’s one area where I’ve held out from joining in: the Pixel phone.

Until now! Two weeks ago, I made the switch to a Pixel 6a. And yes, I have been loving some of the biggest Pixel features, like Night Sight, Magic Eraser and Live Translate. But I’ve enjoyed the small, delightful things, too — tiny details and thoughtful touches that I knew about in theory but didn’t fully appreciate before joining the club.

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Without further ado, here are 14 things, big and small, that I ended up loving in my first 14 days with Pixel.

1. Setting up my Pixel was easy.

The worst part of getting a new phone is the setup and transfer from your old device to the new — and that’s honestly been a major part of what’s held me back! But I quickly learned that being a general Google user made this so much easier an experience than when I’ve changed devices in the past. Because I’ve had a Gmail account for years (from long before I was a Googler), logging into my new Pixel with my account meant that all the things I needed — my email, my documents, my photos — were immediately there. I was even able to transfer my messages with the help of the Pixel guidebook on transferring data. It was definitely my easiest and swiftest transfer experience.

A photograph of a hand holding a Pixel 6a while it's plugged in. The screen shows various abstract circular icons and the screen says "Checking info...".

I was set up in no time.

2. I'm into the look and feel of the new Pixel cases.

Aesthetics matter! I love the color combo of the case and the device, and because the cases are semi-translucent, there’s tons of mix-and-match potential. The slightly rubbery feel of the case (which is made of plastic with an inner layer of 75% recycled materials) is extremely satisfying, too.

A photograph of a hand holding a Pixel 6a, with the back of the phone facing the camera. The phone is in a blue-green semi-translucent case. There is a "G" Google icon on it.

Yes, I have a thing for blues and greens, why do you ask?

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Pixel art: How designers created the new Pixel 6 colors

Meet the team who helped design — and name — the new colors for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well as their cases.

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3. The Pixel 6a feels light in my hand.

There’s nothing bulky about it. It weighs about 6.3 ounces — which is about the same as six pencils! I’ve always had metal phones, and the Pixel’s light tactile alloy frame is something I didn’t think I would notice, but definitely do.

4. The haptic feedback feel is satisfying.

Every device has its own unique haptic feel — that slight vibration that signals a notification — and I really enjoy how the haptic feedback feels on the Pixel 6a. That’s because the technology powering this mechanism was upgraded with the Pixel 6 family, resulting in tighter, more precise vibrations.

5. My Pixel’s lock screen looks lovely every time.

When my phone is asleep and I unlock it from the blank screen, the thumbprint icon lights up and illuminates the screen, and it’s really beautiful. It’s little things like this that caught my eye when I booted up my Pixel for the first time.

6. I'm also a big fan of the charging screen.

When my Pixel is turned off and charging, the screen displays a cool light-up effect showing how much charge it has. It's a fun visual, and it’s also nice to see immediately how much battery my Pixel 6a has left.

A photograph of a hand holding a plugged in Pixel 6a. The screen has a light-up effect around a "56%" notification.

When it's turned off and plugged in, the Pixel 6a shows you a nifty charging screen.

7. Oh, and the battery just keeps going and going.

I’m certainly not the first one to notice it, but the battery life is incredible — it can easily last for 24 hours and up to 72 if I use Extreme Battery Saver[cca74d]. This is because the Adaptive Battery feature learns your favorite apps, so it doesn’t waste power on ones you rarely use. It’s arguably the thing I’ve noticed the most over my first two weeks of using the phone.

8. I can say goodbye to shaky panoramas.

I could go on and on about the Pixel camera. My photos look brighter and crisper compared to my old phone, and the camera bar is very slick. Specifically, my panoramas benefitted; I don’t feel like I have shaky hands until I see some of the panoramic shots I try to grab — but the frame icon that moves along with me as I move the phone makes for a much better end result.

9. And my landscape photos aren't tilted!

One of my biggest photography pet peeves is posting a landscape photo and seeing a slanted line on the horizon. I want that nice, level photo, and I would prefer not to fix it in editing and perhaps lose details as they fall out of frame. The Pixel camera includes that level on screen, so while I’m taking a photo I already know it’s straight. That same “straightener,” as I think of it, also shows up when I'm taking a photo from up above something; when I point the camera down, it will show up to make sure I'm centered.

A screenshot of the camera app on a Pixel 6a. The screen shows that the camera is photographing a park landscape; there is a straightening tool in the center of the photo indicating the phone is level.

The leveling feature is one of my favorites.

10. Google Photos calls out photo dump duplicates.

I’m an “I need five photos of the same thing” type of photographer. Now, when I open Google Photos, the storage manager will automatically prompt me about things like blurry photos and doubles. I don’t miss scrambling to delete photos from my phone when I get the notification that my storage is dwindling.

11. My Pixel can read my screenshots to me.

I’m also a screenshot fiend (and a big fan of using the Quick Tap screenshot gesture), and I often take screenshots of cooking directions. I don’t know if everyone uses Lens for this purpose, but I rely on it to read directions on my phone out loud to me while meal prepping.

12. I love choosing custom colors for my wallpaper.

I found this setting particularly fun: You can head to your wallpaper settings and customize it so that all of the app icons complement your wallpaper photo. Now the colors of my app icons and other elements, like the time, match the background of my screen. Which is very cute, if I may say so.

A screenshot of the "Wallpaper & style" settings on the Pixel 6a phone. It shows a preview of the lock screen (a photograph of a mountaing) and the homescreen wallpaper (a photograph of two dogs at the beach) and underneath are various color scheme options that complement the photos.

Good dogs deserve custom wallpaper colors.

13. I can customize my time-lapse videos, too.

I take a lot of time-lapse videos — I just feel so accomplished when I watch back my baking endeavors or home renovation projects from start to finish. With Pixel, I can toggle between x1, x10, x30 or x120 speeds. Plus, my phone tells me what these mega-speedy functions might be good for — for example, x30 is great for busy street shots.

14. And my Pixel can help me keep track of my Buds.

When I connected my (new) Pixel Buds[3b1689], the Pixel phone took me through a helpful setup screen that told me all sorts of things I’d be able to do with them — like talk to Assistant and skip tracks or go back. But now I can also find my earbuds when they’re missing…which, if I’m being honest, is why I bought new Pixel Buds in the first place.

Work Diary: a Google Assistant marketer in San Francisco

In our new Work Diary series, we show you what a day on the job is really like for Googlers with all sorts of roles and interests around the world. In this installment you'll hear from Seonah, who works on privacy and trust marketing for Google Assistant. Follow along with her day below, and be sure to watch her video diary, too.

Name: Seonah Iverson
Location: San Francisco
Time at Google: 1 year
Job title: Google Assistant Privacy & Trust Product Marketing Lead
What that role actually does: I help make Google Assistant more trusted and safe for the people who use our products.
What’s your favorite part of a typical work day? When I get the chance to hear from real users during research calls - it always inspires me to keep pushing our product to be the best that it can be.

7:15 a.m. → “Hey Google, good morning”

Yes, you guessed it, Google Assistant wakes me up with some alternative R&B playing from my Nest Hub Max Smart Display. I think the first words out of my mouth most mornings are “Hey Google, good morning,” which I set up for my Assistant to tell me the weather forecast, what’s on my calendar and news highlights from my favorite news outlets. I really try not to pull out my phone right away in the morning and dive straight into work emails, and this seriously helps.

8 a.m. → E-bike commute with a view

I work from home two days a week and from the office the rest, I love this flexible schedule. On the days I go into the office, I’m ready to get out of my apartment for a while and connect with my coworkers in person. Google food and coffee doesn’t hurt either. On the mornings I go in, I grab an e-bike in my neighborhood — North Beach — and take the Embarcadero cycling path to the office. The view is so nice (especially when it’s sunny!).

Two photos side-by-side: The first is a hand holding a cup of coffee in front of a window revealing the San Francisco bay and the Bay Bridge; the other is taken from the perspective of someone riding in the bike lane down a street lined with palm trees. On the right of the frame is an icon of a clock that says 8:00 a.m.; on the left there is an icon of a bicycle.

Seonah’s morning consists of an e-bike commute and coffee — both with great views.

8:30 a.m. → Prep for projects focused on protecting user privacy

When I get to the office, I grab an oat milk latte from the Flora Hub coffee bar on the 13th floor and start looking at my emails and calendar for the day. (This spot has the best views of the Bay — you can see all the way to the Bay Bridge.)

I start this part of the workday by taking inventory of my inbox and calendar and making any adjustments I need to — moving meetings or booking conference rooms, things like that. I also make sure I’ve blocked off at least one part of the day for me to go heads-down and get things done on my top projects. I think of this as my mental prep time.

This week, I’m focused on gathering key user insights from research and prepping for a product and messaging review — this helps our product team address top user concerns and explain things in a simple way that makes sense to everyone.

9 a.m. → Down to business!

My meeting blocks tend to start around 9 a.m., so I head to a conference room. For most of the morning, I’m in Google Meet calls with user focus groups to hear from real users on the privacy controls and settings they use most often or would like to better understand.

When I finish up with user research calls, I meet with Assistant product managers, engineers and other teammates located in New York, Atlanta and Mountain View. We talk about the upcoming privacy and safety settings improvements we’re planning to launch and how we can introduce the updates without disrupting our users’ experience — these meetings always spark good ideas and are key to moving projects forward.

12 p.m. → Cafe with teammates, by route of dooglers <3

Around noon I meet up with some of my fellow Assistant marketing teammates and we walk outside to get to the Maritime Social cafe. The best part is passing by the doogler area and seeing the pups playing!

I have a huge sweet tooth, so I always get dessert with lunch, whatever it is.

Two side-by-side photos: The first shows a grassy field, there are dogs and people. Skyscrapers are in the background. The second shows a lunch table where you can see some people in the background and in the foreground are multiple plates and bowls of different kinds of food. On the right side there is a frame with an icon that reads 12:00 p.m.; on the left there is an icon of a plate of food and a salt and pepper shaker.

Seonah’s walk to lunch takes her past fellow Googlers — and a few dooglers.

1 p.m. → Boba and brainstorm

In the afternoon, I grab boba from a nearby cafe and meet up with the Google Asians in Marketing group. We get together in a conference room to talk about creating more representation and inclusion not just at Google, but also in the marketing industry in general. This is a volunteer project that I always enjoy participating in.

2 p.m. → Back into top privacy priorities and checking off tasks

I head to my desk and get back to daily tasks for the next couple of hours. Today, one thing I want to cross off my list is completing some writing and design work that explains the latest updates to Assistant privacy controls that will appear on our website and in our email newsletter to users. Part of this process includes making sure our explainer videos are up to date and translated appropriately for users worldwide.

I usually listen to music when I’m doing this — that’s how I get into a flow mindset and get the most done. I really try to balance meetings with tasks to make each day as productive as possible; I love creating Calendar tasks and crossing them off my list. Sometimes I'll even retroactively add them and cross them off! The mix of completed tasks and meetings on my calendar is my source of truth to keep me accountable to projects I’m spending time on and if I have room to take on any other stretch projects.

4 p.m. → Ahhhh, a quick chair massage break

When I feel like I need a pick-me-up, I take a break with a chair massage on the second floor, near the gym.

Two side-by-side photos - the first shows Seonah sitting in a chair working t her laptop. The second photo shows a laptop on a desk open to a Google Calendar. There is an illustrated frame featuring a boba tea drink and a clock that reads 4pm.

Seonah finishes up her day and looks at her calendar for tomorrow.

4:30 p.m. → Time for inbox zero

Back to my laptop one last time to finish up daily work and respond to those last few emails. Personally, I subscribe to the inbox zero way of life, so I make sure to check that box before I head out for the day! Oh, and I water my desk plant if it’s looking wilty.

5 p.m. → Barre class and a walk home

Before heading home, I like to take a barre class nearby. Afterward, I’ll walk home and run some errands on the way. I’ll usually listen to my more recent playlist, a current events podcast or call my family. I’m always listening to something if I’m walking around or sitting at my desk; part of my daily attire is a pair of headphones.

7 p.m. → Dinner and a show — or a Korean language lesson

To close out the day it’s either date night, grab dinner with friends or cook at home. Afterwards, I’ll usually watch some TV — or if I want to do something more engaging, I’ll practice my Korean (I just started taking language classes) or practice piano on my keyboard.

Two side-by-side photographs - the first of a Nest Hub sitting on a desk and the second of a person's hands over a keyboard. There is an illustrated frame feature icons of an alarm clock and a stack of books.

Time to relax with some music and get ready for tomorrow.

The last to-do of the day is looking at my Nest Hub Max Smart Display and by using Look and Talk, I ask my Assistant to “set my alarm for 7:15 a.m. tomorrow."

12 things you didn’t know about Google Doodles

Every August, Jessica Yu and a carefully selected committee of Googlers from various backgrounds begin the delicate — and joyful — process of choosing which Google Doodles will appear on the Google homepage in the coming year. They begin meeting regularly in the summer and usually wrap up by late October. Sometimes they gather in person, other times over Google Meet. Either way, it adds up to hours of discussion and work each week, all dedicated to making Doodle magic happen.

“We want to create that feeling of surprise and delight when you’re going about your day-to-day life, and then — tada! — a little gift,” Jessica says. “We want people to learn something, or laugh, or feel inspired.”

As the team lead, part of Jessica's job during this annual selection is to help choose Doodles from a massive pile of submissions (which come from Doodle team members, other Googlers and then from people completely outside Google), discuss them with this committee and a network of global cultural consultants and then decide on the best way to bring them to life. "You have to figure out how you want to depict this topic or person,” she says. “Should it be an image or an animated GIF? Or should it be interactive, or even a game.”

Perla Campos, Marketing lead for Doodles, says this process takes so long partly because getting the most diverse and inclusive collection of Doodles requires the team to hear from Googlers all over the world. “It’s a balance of having a lot of cooks in the kitchen but also making sure we have everyone involved,” she says. The other reason selections are so drawn out: Perla estimates that the team looks over “a couple thousand” Doodle ideas. “It’s a puzzle,” she says. “It’s a huge puzzle.”

While Doodles are beloved inside Google and by many who visit the homepage, more goes into them than you might think. So I asked a few Googlers on the Doodles team to share some of the surprising and, yes, delightful details and stories from behind the scenes.

  1. The Doodle team receives about 7,000 submissions a year. Jessica says the hardest part of the team’s job is definitely sifting through Doodle submissions — because there are so many great ones. The team gets hundreds of requests every day from people who email [email protected], and Googlers are pitching their concepts all the time, too.
Four people sitting at a conference table. Two of them have laptops open. They all swiveled in their seats looking at sketch work on a large screen behind them. One person gestures toward it.

A few members of the Doodle team discussing the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Doodle.

One really important part of this submission process is working with Local Doodle Managers who represent different global countries and clue the core team into what important moments and milestones will resonate the most on a local level. Not all Doodles display everywhere; some are specific to their regions, and these country-specific teammates help manage these requests. “We literally couldn’t do it without submissions and then help from our Local Doodle Managers,” Perla says.

2. We published our 5,000th Doodle in 2020. It celebrated Slovakia’s Freedom and Democracy Day, the country’s annual holiday commemorating heroic efforts by local youth activists. In contrast, the very first Doodle was published way back in 1998, and was a bit of a joke from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to remind Googlers they would be out of office for Burning Man.

The original Google logo with an exclamation point at the end. The Burning Man icon is behind the second “o.”

The first Doodle ever.

3. We have a public archivewhere you can check out every Doodle ever made. It launched in December 2011 (and keep an eye out, because it’s getting a makeover in the near future). In the archive, you can read about each Doodle and learn about the topic at hand, and often read about the artist as well — there’s also a section for interactive Doodles you can revisit. You can even check out the history of Doodles for any specific day. (And since we’re talking about learning more about Doodles: Did you know you can click each Doodle for more information about its theme? Just a little pro tip.)

A screenshot of the Doodles Archive. At the top is an entry about Kimiko Tsumura’s 120th birthday with an illustration of a Japanese woman in traditional makeup next to a bonsai tree.

The Doodles archive.

4. The Doodles team has a set of principles that every single Doodle follows. A major one is that Doodles should aim to delight and surprise people, as Jessica mentioned above. Another key principle: Doodles are never dedicated to someone who’s still alive, because person-focused Doodles are meant to honor someone’s lifetime achievements. Perla says Stephen Hawking is a good example of why the team has this principle. “We were able to create this really cool video Doodle in partnership with his family to honor him. We were able to give him a proper tribute.”

A video explaining the Google Doodle to honor Stephen Hawking.
10:25

Doodles also never promote brands. “This is a gift to our audience. We don’t want it to feel like an ad,” Jessica explains. The team also strives to showcase high-quality art and technology, and aims to select or create Doodles that are inclusive of everyone.

5. The first animated Doodle premiered on Halloween 2000. It was the work of guest artist Lorie Loeb. Halloween Doodles would go on to become an annual focus for animation and engineering feats (more on that later!).

An animated gif of the old Google logo with two blinking pumpkins instead of the “o’s” and an animated spider web attached to the “l” and “e.”

6. Doodles aren’t all entirely digital. While plenty of artists use digital mediums to create Doodles, others start with sketches or paintings — or even other items — to create their Doodles. One example was a Veteran’s Day Doodle made by a Veteran who’s also an artist. “She took old military uniforms from all different branches and made a paper scroll of them all together,” Jessica says. “It’s an amazing piece of art.”

7. Many Doodles are the work of multiple teams at Google. For instance, the first AI-powered Doodle honoring Johann Sebastian Bach that came out in 2019 was the work of the engineering Doodle team and Google’s machine learning department. “It was such a great synthesis of an interesting idea plus this technology that we were working on at Google,” says lead Doodle engineer Tom Tabanao. “It was a cool way to make that technology accessible to people.”

A video explaining the creator of the Sebestian Bach Doodle.
10:25

8. The Halloween 2018 Doodleactually came out of a Googler hackathon. The 2018 Halloween Doodle was a multiplayer game that Tom wanted to make. “I thought it was an impossible goal but we made a demo and we saw how fun it was,” he says. “So we started building it out and testing it more, and then we held a hackathon for a week to work on it. By the end of the week, people were playing this really simple game for hours.” So they set to work on the Doodle, which became a major engineering feat that took literal years to make.

A screenshot of the Hallowee game. There’s a smiling cartoon character in the middle of the black screen, and two buttons in the lower right hand corner that read “host game” and “skip tutorial.”

And speaking of Doodles that took a long time to make…

9. The Selena homage, which launched in October 2017, underwent a major makeover.

Perla actually pitched the idea for a Selena Doodle when she was working as Spain’s Local Doodle Manager. “Obviously, huge bias on my end! I had a personal stake in that one,” she says. “When I heard it was picked for the next year I was like, ‘That’s great,’ but also, ‘I’m so jealous I won’t work on it!’” She'd taken a new role on the Doodle team, so she wouldn't directly be working on the Selena Doodle.

A video explaining the process of creating the Selena Doodle.
10:25

But upon learning the intention of the team to create a static illustration honoring the entertainer, she asked if the team could rethink things. “I asked, 'can we hold it so that we can try and license music and work with the family? I really think we should do something amazing here.'” They scrapped the original proposal and decided to go bigger — much, much bigger, with music and video, and eventually a massive audience; it ended up becoming one of the most popular video Doodles ever.

To honor Selena and talk about the Doodle, her sister, Suzette, even visited Google to discuss how her family collaborated with the Doodle team on the project.

A video of Googler Perla Campos meeting with Selena's sister, Suzette.
10:25

10. The series of Champion Island game Doodles from 2021 had the longest production process. The Doodle — er, Doodles — launched as a series starting in July 2021 to celebrate the Olympics. It was originally supposed to debut the previous summer. But because COVID-19 delayed the entire Olympic games, the interactive game was also pushed back…a whole year.

A video of the behind the scenes of the Halloween Doodle.
10:25

With six sport mini games, 24 side quests, multiple endings and over three hours of gameplay, it's the most expansive Doodle ever made. It even contains easter eggs for other Doodle games, like Magic Cat Academy and Pangolin Love.

11. In 2009, we created the first same-day Doodle when water was discovered on the moon. Artist Jennifer Hom worked for just a few hours and then it went live. “I was sitting at my desk at 9 a.m. PT, when I stumbled on an article about this current event,” she wrote in the Doodle archive.

The old Google logo written with a water-like effect, and the second “o” is the Moon.

“I quickly sent the article to my team and, by the time I was about to take a bite out of my lunch, I received a call to have this Doodle sketched, drafted, finished and live on all our homepages in four hours. It was an exciting day for a Doodler and the world of science!”

Sometimes the team has the luxury of taking weeks or even a year to produce a Doodle. For the really quick turnaround ones, though, a small dedicated team of Doodlers keeps an eye out for events that might be a fit. (Or sometimes another Doodler stumbles on one of these concepts, like Jennifer did!). Then they have to make sure the idea has the green light from everyone from marketing to policy and beyond…and, oh, is there an artist or animator within the Doodle team who can turn this around in time? “Everyone’s sort of on standby while this is happening,” Perla says. Once the Doodle’s almost ready, they ask what regions want to opt into displaying it and then…well, they upload it.

12. The team often turns to cultural consultants for feedback. “If a Doodle is about or for a community, we bring that community into the process,” Perla says. This includes hiring guest artists, but also working with people beyond that to get the work right and truly represent a group accurately. “For example, we ran a Doodle during Native American Heritage Month last year honoring a Zuni artist, and we partnered with a guest artist from the tribe but also a Zuni community cultural consultant the tribal government connected us with.”

A behind the scenes video of the work on the Native American Heritage Month Doodle.
10:25

The Doodle team was able to run things by the consultant to make sure they felt it rang true. “It’s important we be real with ourselves and say, ‘We don’t know about this topic — but let’s find people who do, so it’s authentic.’” After all, Perla says, the goal of Doodles is to make sure everyone, everywhere feels represented and valued.

Source: Search


12 things you didn’t know about Google Doodles

Every August, Jessica Yu and a carefully selected committee of Googlers from various backgrounds begin the delicate — and joyful — process of choosing which Google Doodles will appear on the Google homepage in the coming year. They begin meeting regularly in the summer and usually wrap up by late October. Sometimes they gather in person, other times over Google Meet. Either way, it adds up to hours of discussion and work each week, all dedicated to making Doodle magic happen.

“We want to create that feeling of surprise and delight when you’re going about your day-to-day life, and then — tada! — a little gift,” Jessica says. “We want people to learn something, or laugh, or feel inspired.”

As the team lead, part of Jessica's job during this annual selection is to help choose Doodles from a massive pile of submissions (which come from Doodle team members, other Googlers and then from people completely outside Google), discuss them with this committee and a network of global cultural consultants and then decide on the best way to bring them to life. "You have to figure out how you want to depict this topic or person,” she says. “Should it be an image or an animated GIF? Or should it be interactive, or even a game.”

Perla Campos, Marketing lead for Doodles, says this process takes so long partly because getting the most diverse and inclusive collection of Doodles requires the team to hear from Googlers all over the world. “It’s a balance of having a lot of cooks in the kitchen but also making sure we have everyone involved,” she says. The other reason selections are so drawn out: Perla estimates that the team looks over “a couple thousand” Doodle ideas. “It’s a puzzle,” she says. “It’s a huge puzzle.”

While Doodles are beloved inside Google and by many who visit the homepage, more goes into them than you might think. So I asked a few Googlers on the Doodles team to share some of the surprising and, yes, delightful details and stories from behind the scenes.

  1. The Doodle team receives about 7,000 submissions a year. Jessica says the hardest part of the team’s job is definitely sifting through Doodle submissions — because there are so many great ones. The team gets hundreds of requests every day from people who email [email protected], and Googlers are pitching their concepts all the time, too.
Four people sitting at a conference table. Two of them have laptops open. They all swiveled in their seats looking at sketch work on a large screen behind them. One person gestures toward it.

A few members of the Doodle team discussing the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Doodle.

One really important part of this submission process is working with Local Doodle Managers who represent different global countries and clue the core team into what important moments and milestones will resonate the most on a local level. Not all Doodles display everywhere; some are specific to their regions, and these country-specific teammates help manage these requests. “We literally couldn’t do it without submissions and then help from our Local Doodle Managers,” Perla says.

2. We published our 5,000th Doodle in 2020. It celebrated Slovakia’s Freedom and Democracy Day, the country’s annual holiday commemorating heroic efforts by local youth activists. In contrast, the very first Doodle was published way back in 1998, and was a bit of a joke from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to remind Googlers they would be out of office for Burning Man.

The original Google logo with an exclamation point at the end. The Burning Man icon is behind the second “o.”

The first Doodle ever.

3. We have a public archivewhere you can check out every Doodle ever made. It launched in December 2011 (and keep an eye out, because it’s getting a makeover in the near future). In the archive, you can read about each Doodle and learn about the topic at hand, and often read about the artist as well — there’s also a section for interactive Doodles you can revisit. You can even check out the history of Doodles for any specific day. (And since we’re talking about learning more about Doodles: Did you know you can click each Doodle for more information about its theme? Just a little pro tip.)

A screenshot of the Doodles Archive. At the top is an entry about Kimiko Tsumura’s 120th birthday with an illustration of a Japanese woman in traditional makeup next to a bonsai tree.

The Doodles archive.

4. The Doodles team has a set of principles that every single Doodle follows. A major one is that Doodles should aim to delight and surprise people, as Jessica mentioned above. Another key principle: Doodles are never dedicated to someone who’s still alive, because person-focused Doodles are meant to honor someone’s lifetime achievements. Perla says Stephen Hawking is a good example of why the team has this principle. “We were able to create this really cool video Doodle in partnership with his family to honor him. We were able to give him a proper tribute.”

A video explaining the Google Doodle to honor Stephen Hawking.
10:25

Doodles also never promote brands. “This is a gift to our audience. We don’t want it to feel like an ad,” Jessica explains. The team also strives to showcase high-quality art and technology, and aims to select or create Doodles that are inclusive of everyone.

5. The first animated Doodle premiered on Halloween 2000. It was the work of guest artist Lorie Loeb. Halloween Doodles would go on to become an annual focus for animation and engineering feats (more on that later!).

An animated gif of the old Google logo with two blinking pumpkins instead of the “o’s” and an animated spider web attached to the “l” and “e.”

6. Doodles aren’t all entirely digital. While plenty of artists use digital mediums to create Doodles, others start with sketches or paintings — or even other items — to create their Doodles. One example was a Veteran’s Day Doodle made by a Veteran who’s also an artist. “She took old military uniforms from all different branches and made a paper scroll of them all together,” Jessica says. “It’s an amazing piece of art.”

7. Many Doodles are the work of multiple teams at Google. For instance, the first AI-powered Doodle honoring Johann Sebastian Bach that came out in 2019 was the work of the engineering Doodle team and Google’s machine learning department. “It was such a great synthesis of an interesting idea plus this technology that we were working on at Google,” says lead Doodle engineer Tom Tabanao. “It was a cool way to make that technology accessible to people.”

A video explaining the creator of the Sebestian Bach Doodle.
10:25

8. The Halloween 2018 Doodleactually came out of a Googler hackathon. The 2018 Halloween Doodle was a multiplayer game that Tom wanted to make. “I thought it was an impossible goal but we made a demo and we saw how fun it was,” he says. “So we started building it out and testing it more, and then we held a hackathon for a week to work on it. By the end of the week, people were playing this really simple game for hours.” So they set to work on the Doodle, which became a major engineering feat that took literal years to make.

A screenshot of the Hallowee game. There’s a smiling cartoon character in the middle of the black screen, and two buttons in the lower right hand corner that read “host game” and “skip tutorial.”

And speaking of Doodles that took a long time to make…

9. The Selena homage, which launched in October 2017, underwent a major makeover.

Perla actually pitched the idea for a Selena Doodle when she was working as Spain’s Local Doodle Manager. “Obviously, huge bias on my end! I had a personal stake in that one,” she says. “When I heard it was picked for the next year I was like, ‘That’s great,’ but also, ‘I’m so jealous I won’t work on it!’” She'd taken a new role on the Doodle team, so she wouldn't directly be working on the Selena Doodle.

A video explaining the process of creating the Selena Doodle.
10:25

But upon learning the intention of the team to create a static illustration honoring the entertainer, she asked if the team could rethink things. “I asked, 'can we hold it so that we can try and license music and work with the family? I really think we should do something amazing here.'” They scrapped the original proposal and decided to go bigger — much, much bigger, with music and video, and eventually a massive audience; it ended up becoming one of the most popular video Doodles ever.

To honor Selena and talk about the Doodle, her sister, Suzette, even visited Google to discuss how her family collaborated with the Doodle team on the project.

A video of Googler Perla Campos meeting with Selena's sister, Suzette.
10:25

10. The series of Champion Island game Doodles from 2021 had the longest production process. The Doodle — er, Doodles — launched as a series starting in July 2021 to celebrate the Olympics. It was originally supposed to debut the previous summer. But because COVID-19 delayed the entire Olympic games, the interactive game was also pushed back…a whole year.

A video of the behind the scenes of the Halloween Doodle.
10:25

With six sport mini games, 24 side quests, multiple endings and over three hours of gameplay, it's the most expansive Doodle ever made. It even contains easter eggs for other Doodle games, like Magic Cat Academy and Pangolin Love.

11. In 2009, we created the first same-day Doodle when water was discovered on the moon. Artist Jennifer Hom worked for just a few hours and then it went live. “I was sitting at my desk at 9 a.m. PT, when I stumbled on an article about this current event,” she wrote in the Doodle archive.

The old Google logo written with a water-like effect, and the second “o” is the Moon.

“I quickly sent the article to my team and, by the time I was about to take a bite out of my lunch, I received a call to have this Doodle sketched, drafted, finished and live on all our homepages in four hours. It was an exciting day for a Doodler and the world of science!”

Sometimes the team has the luxury of taking weeks or even a year to produce a Doodle. For the really quick turnaround ones, though, a small dedicated team of Doodlers keeps an eye out for events that might be a fit. (Or sometimes another Doodler stumbles on one of these concepts, like Jennifer did!). Then they have to make sure the idea has the green light from everyone from marketing to policy and beyond…and, oh, is there an artist or animator within the Doodle team who can turn this around in time? “Everyone’s sort of on standby while this is happening,” Perla says. Once the Doodle’s almost ready, they ask what regions want to opt into displaying it and then…well, they upload it.

12. The team often turns to cultural consultants for feedback. “If a Doodle is about or for a community, we bring that community into the process,” Perla says. This includes hiring guest artists, but also working with people beyond that to get the work right and truly represent a group accurately. “For example, we ran a Doodle during Native American Heritage Month last year honoring a Zuni artist, and we partnered with a guest artist from the tribe but also a Zuni community cultural consultant the tribal government connected us with.”

A behind the scenes video of the work on the Native American Heritage Month Doodle.
10:25

The Doodle team was able to run things by the consultant to make sure they felt it rang true. “It’s important we be real with ourselves and say, ‘We don’t know about this topic — but let’s find people who do, so it’s authentic.’” After all, Perla says, the goal of Doodles is to make sure everyone, everywhere feels represented and valued.

Source: Search


I asked Gmail experts to rewrite my emails

You may think that, as a writer at Google, I would be an accomplished emailer — but the truth is that my emailing skills and inbox management could use some help. I often feel like I’m sending emails that disappear into the void, go unanswered (or partially answered) for too long or that require more follow up than I’d like. There’s got to be a better way!

Luckily for me, I work with no shortage of email experts. So I asked a few of them to critique some of my recent emails, and to give me pointers about what I could have done instead.

Turns out the secret to strong, effective emails is a mix of clear writing and helpful tools. See for yourself below with these before and after examples straight from my sent messages folder.

In the “before” emails, I’ve used bolded copy and superscripts to make it clear what exactly the email pros identified as missteps. The superscript numbers match up to the mistake and solution feedback (so, superscript 2 matches up to mistake and solution #2, superscript 3 with #3, and so on). And then you can see the revised email (the “after”), with bolded copy and superscripts to indicate the changes I made based on that feedback.

Let’s get to it.

A page break illustration showing a blue line with a gmail icon in the middle.

The email:

Date: August 26, 2022, 6:46 PM1
Subject: Happy Friday2

Hi everyone! Wanted to recap everything we went over in the meeting earlier this week. The whole team is going to divide and conquer, so why don’t you let me know3 what piece you’d like to work on? Or… thoughts on how best to go about that?3 Also, we still need to figure out if we want to bring in other teams to help out with this or if we think it would be best to do our part first and then look for outside help… thoughts?3 OK I think that’s it, have a great weekend! And if you could get back to me on this asap4 that would be great because then I can solidify the recap notes and send them along.

Thanks!
Molly

The feedback:

Mistake #1: I sent an email — with action items — at the end of the day on a Friday!
The solution: Use Gmail’s schedule send feature. “Sending people an email on a Friday afternoon makes it really difficult to get feedback,” says Maalika Manoharan, a Gmail product manager. “Schedule it for Monday morning,” she says, when people are more focused on work and better able to respond. “Or better yet, Tuesday morning — people can be slammed trying to catch up from the weekend on Monday, and it could get lost.”

Mistake #2: The subject line doesn’t indicate what the email is about.
The solution: I should have started with a much more specific subject line, says Sergio Civetta, who works in Strategy and Operations and has helped with email courses for Googlers. People are busy, and getting to the point helps them manage their inboxes and figure out what needs their attention.

Mistake #3: For such a short note, I asked for fairly broad feedback.
The solution: “If you want email replies on specific topics, break them out clearly and be as direct as possible,” Sergio says. He notes that depending on who I’m sending this out to, I should use my own judgment to determine if this is going to lead to a messy string of replies. If so, it might be better to jump into a meeting or email people separately — or ask for feedback in a central location, like a Google Sheet or a Doc.

Mistake #4: I wasn’t clear about when I needed their responses.
The solution: Be clear and specific if you need a response. “In this case, I’d suggest telling them multiple times they have action items, and anchoring a specific date for responses before closing your email,” Sergio says.

The revise:

Date: August 29, 2022, 9:30 AM1
Subject: [Response requested] Project kick-off meeting action items2

Hi everyone!

Thanks all for attending our kick-off on Friday. There are a few items still in need of your input3:

Workstream ownership3
We agreed to divide and conquer. I’ve attached a Google Sheet that lists the various project workstreams; please indicate in the Sheet3 which ones you’d like to own.

Involvement of other teams3
We still need to figure out if we want to involve other teams right now or if we’re better off getting this started on our own and making a call later. Please reply to this thread3 with your thoughts on that question.

I’d appreciate your answers by Tuesday4 so we can finalize recap notes and next steps.

Thank you!
-Molly

A page break illustration showing a blue line with a gmail icon in the middle.

The email:

Date: August 24, 2022, 2:39 PM
Subject: (no subject)1

Hey, I had a few questions about the trip:

Do you know when it is? Also, I’m supposed to be helping with some of the planning…but I need a few more details before getting started - something you could help with? What do you think everyone will want to do? What’s the consensus?

I have a million more questions2 so let me know what you think when you can!

-Molly

The feedback:

Mistake #1: I didn’t include a subject line at all.
The solution: Use Gmail’s Smart Compose. Maalika wisely points out that one huge problem with this email is that it doesn’t have a subject line. “You can just let Gmail write the subject line for you,” she says. “Most people probably think of Smart Compose as filling in responses, but it can also help fill in subject lines.” You’ll see Gmail make a subject line suggestion once the email is drafted, and hitting tab will fill it in — so long as you’ve written something in the body of the email for the tool to pull from. (Gmail will also ask if the suggestion isn’t what you need, and you can help this feature get smarter with a response.)

Mistake #2: I asked rapid-fire questions without options for answering.
The solution: With this many questions, some which could require extensive answers, Google productivity expert Laura Mae Martin advises that I could have offered other methods for responding, like a Google Meet call or via Google Chat, or even a Google Form so I could get decisions right away. This way it doesn’t devolve into half-answered questions or never-ending email chains chasing answers. “Or I would have used bullets with spaces between and asked folks to insert their answers inline,” she says.

The revise:

Date: August 24, 2022, 2:39 PM
Subject: [Response requested] Questions about the upcoming trip1

Hey there, I have some questions about the upcoming trip! If you could reply with answers inline2, that would be great.

1. What is the main focus going to be?
2. Do you know when it is?
3. I’m going to help with planning — thoughts on what folks would like to do? We have three afternoon slots for activities.

Those are my main questions, so feel free to respond here or we can talk via Google Chat2 and go from there — I’d like to have everything set by Tuesday. Thanks!

-Molly

A page break illustration showing a blue line with a gmail icon in the middle.

The email:

Date: August 12, 2022, 11:34 AM
Subject: RE: Project Assignments [Confidential]1

Apologies, the previous email was not meant for Team C. Those details were confidential for Teams A and B only.

August 12, 2022, 11:29 AM Molly McHugh-Johnson wrote:

As discussed, here are all of the details from the product meeting earlier today for Teams A and B. Please do not forward this email! Only reply with your additions2 to the notes before we send up the line.

The feedback:

Mistake #1: I sent a sensitive email to the wrong people!
The solution(s): I should have sent this in confidential mode, or unsent it when I realized my slip-up. With confidential mode, “the content can expire on a certain date and people can’t download it, or forward it,” says Gmail product marketing manager Stephanie Chang. And there’s also a solution in case you send something that you shouldn’t, like I did here: undo send. “We hear people say they wish they could unsend an email,” Maalika says. “And you can!” A little notification pops up in the bottom of the screen where you can undo a send.

“And if you’re particularly nervous about sending something you want to get back, you can customize the settings of how long you can click undo send,” Stephanie says. You can change how long your own undo send timing lasts for — it can be up to 30 seconds. Another delay-related idea from Maalika is to schedule the send for an hour later. “That way, if I have second thoughts, I can revise and reschedule.”

Mistake #2: This email is begging to become a never-ending thread.
The solution: When an email requires multiple people for input, Stephanie says I could draft it in a Google Doc and ask everyone who needed to help write it assist me there. Using Google Docs to first draft the copy means you’ll be able to keep all the formatting the same, in addition to the language. “Then when it’s ready, you can just hit File, Email and Email draft,” she says.

The revise:

Date: August 12, 2022, 11:34 AM
Subject: Project Assignments [Confidential]1

As discussed, here are all of the details from the product meeting earlier today for Teams A and B. Please do not respond to this email with notes — instead, add your input to this Google Doc in suggested mode2. Thank you!

[This email was sent in confidential mode.]1

A page break illustration showing a blue line with a gmail icon in the middle.

The email:

Date: August 11, 2022 9:50 am
Subject: Re: VIP read now! Need your input1

Hey, I’m so so so so sorry2, I totally missed this email — it got swallowed up this week. I promise I will look at this first thing Monday!3

The feedback:

Mistake #1: I missed an important email that required my feedback.
The solution: Stephanie suggests I use the snooze function on future important emails, so that I can’t forget about them. “Or you can look out for nudges — they’re sort of saying ‘hey, you received this email a few days ago, do you want to reply?’” You can also solve this email issue with some inbox organization, like Stephanie does. “I personally love using tasks,” she says. “I have a task list so I’ll add emails that need to be replied to and then I know, say Monday morning, I have that on my list.” Another option, Maalika says, is to simply star your emails and then hit your starred folder — or color code your stars so they indicate items to address today, tomorrow, next week, etc. Or, Laura says, using labels could have prevented me from missing the email in the first place. “I have a list of color-coded labels that I use — for example if an email comes from someone with an @google.com email address, it gets coded a certain way,” she says.

Mistake #2: I apologized maybe a bit more than was necessary.
The solution: “No need to repeatedly apologize!” Laura says. “I think one thing you could have done better, which I'm a big proponent of, is not answering every email right away, but acknowledging emails right away.”

Mistake #3: I set an overly ambitious deadline for myself.
“I’d reply saying ‘by no later than Tuesday morning,’ so you have all day Monday to get to it,” Laura says. Sergio also says one option would be to simply wait until Monday to reply at all. “Sometimes it’s best to save the person an email that just tells them there’s another one coming.” But should I feel compelled to send one immediately, here’s a new and improved version:

The revise:

Date: August 11, 2022 9:50 am
Subject: Re: VIP read now! Need your input

Hi!

Thanks for sending this - I have it on my radar2. I had a lot going on this week so I will be sure to review and complete comments no later than Tuesday morning3.

Thanks and I look forward to reviewing!

-Molly

Source: Gmail Blog


See how artists turned the elevators into art at Bay View

There’s a lot to take in when you visit Google’s Bay View campus. There are the dragonscale solar panels, the grassy wetlands surrounding the building and…the elevators. Yes, the elevators.

Bay View is a three-building campus composed of large, pavilion-like canopy structures, the highest point of which stands at 126 feet. Inside the two office buildings, there are multiple free-standing elevators that take Googlers to the upper floors designed for team focus. Nine of these elevators aren’t just elevators; they’re also works of art.

Google’s Artist in Residence program worked with local artists to commission work in Google spaces and turn the side panels of the elevators into giant murals. “Bay View is one of our larger projects,” says Josette Melchor, who’s part of Google’s Real Estate and Workplace Services team and oversees the Artist in Residence program’s efforts. “The idea was to create these inner courtyards throughout Bay View that reflect the ecology of the area.” The elevator shafts, which each stand between 32 and 37 feet high, are part of this; mural artists were given five “biomes,” or biological themes, to work with — grasslands, scrubs, dunes, oak savanna and tidal/marsh. The biomes also form courtyards that naturally help visitors find their way around Bay View.

Josette says from start to finish — from the concept stage to the final brushstrokes — the process of working with the mural artists took about a year and a half. “There’s a lot that goes into it that people might not think about,” says Andrea Ceseña, the project producer and curator who worked with the Bay View artists. For instance, all of the artists had to become scissor lift-certified so they could be lifted up to paint the entirety of the elevators. Artists also worked on their murals while occasionally surrounded by the people who would be seeing them everyday — Googlers who work in the Bay View building. People who were working on finishing Bay View also took in the art, Andrea says, which was rather unusual for an art project at Google. “It was about expanded the audience that artists normally have when they’re working on something,” Andrea says. “Everyone was so excited to see the artwork while it was in production.”

But instead of just telling you about these impressive projects, let’s take a quick tour of them — and meet the artists behind them.

Mural title: Untitled

Artist: Brett Flanigan
Theme: Dunes

When you first walk into Bay View’s main entrance and make it through the front lobby area, you’ll notice Brett Flanigan’s elevator shaft mural to your left. Brett is a self-taught artist who says his degree in biology influences his work. “I first consider the initial conditions, including the surface and shape of the wall,” Brett says. “These inform the rules and algorithms I then use to create patterns, as geological events create the specific conditions for the formation of sand dunes.”

  • A photograph of Brett's mural on the elevator, an abstract representation of dunes.

    Brett Flanigan. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of Brett's mural on the elevator, an abstract representation of dunes.

    Brett Flanigan. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A sketch of Brett's dune-themed mural.

    An early sketch of Brett's mural.

Mural title: “Megalith”

Artist: Carmen McNall
Theme: Oak savanna

Continuing around the space clockwise, you’ll next run into Carmen McNall’s mural, which uses carved wood grain patterns and various neutral shades to suggest the feeling of looking up the trunk of a tree. “I was excited to create a piece that was so vertical and wrapped around the structure,” Carmen says. “I thought about it as a sculptural piece in a way, because it would be seen from many different angles.”

She tried to bring her biome theme — oak savanna, a sparsely forested grassland — to life by incorporating structure into the mural. “I thought about the oak savanna and how all the elements in this environment are so delicately balanced, yet they withstand and regrow despite the threat of fire,” she says. “I decided to incorporate hand carved pieces of wood, which represent the textures and patterns of the oak savanna.”

  • A photograph of Carmen's mural on an elevator inside a large building. The elevator is yellow with geometric shapes on it.

    Carmen McNall. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of Carmen's mural on an elevator inside a large building. The elevator is yellow with geometric shapes on it.

    Carmen McNall. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A sketch of Carmen's mural; various geomatric shapes stacked on top of one another against a yellow background.

    An early sketch of Carmen's mural.

This was the largest piece Carmen had worked on, both literally and in a project management sense. “Working on a 30-foot tall piece was a really empowering experience and I can’t wait to do more projects at this scale — or larger!” she says.

Mural title: “Tidal Moves”

Artist: Rachel Kaye
Theme: Tidal/marsh

After making your way through the first building, you’re on to the next. Here you’ll spot Rachel Kaye’s mural. “I did some research on plant forms in tidal habitats and played around with their shapes until I got a composition that flowed and played around the elevator shaft,” Rachel says of her mural, which was her largest to date and took her two full weeks to paint. She used interior house paint for the mural, as well. "Nothing fancy." Rachel’s mural took inspiration from the tidal/marsh theme, though she hopes people who see it can interpret it however they like. “I try not to steer the viewer in one direction of thinking. I like my work to feel open-ended.”

  • A photograph of Rachel's mural on an elevator. Various abstract shapes primarily in blue and green shades suggest water and grasses.

    Rachel Kaye. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of Rachel's mural on an elevator. Various abstract shapes primarily in blue and green shades suggest water and grasses.

    Rachel Kaye. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • An illustration of various blue, green, brown, and coral shapes suggestions water and plants.

    An early sketch of Rachel's mural.

Mural title: “Coastline”

Artist: Tess Rubinstein
Theme: Tidal/marsh

Next comes Tess Rubinstein’s work. “Initially I had a hard time conceptualizing what the elevator shaft would look like,” Tess says. “It’s such a new format, painting a multi-dimensional space instead of a flat wall. It wasn’t until I visited the site that I fully grasped the shape and size of the project.” Tess’s mural was assigned the tidal theme, which was perfect for the artist. “I had just received my California naturalist training and had been learning all about seaweed and how vital it is for the health of our oceans,” she says. “I also live near the coast and spend a good deal of time at the beach, drawing the seaweed and shells that wash ashore.”

Tess focused on the seaweed in her mural because she wanted to pay homage to something that’s incredibly important to the ocean, but often overlooked. “I hope that people feel soothed by the color palette and forms,” she says. “Beyond that, I hope that it provides a moment of reflection on the beauty and value of our surrounding ecosystems.”

  • A photograph of Tess's mural on an elevator. The mural has a blue background with illustrations of birds and grasses against it.

    Tess Rubinstein. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of Tess's mural on an elevator. The mural has a blue background with illustrations of birds and grasses against it.

    Tess Rubinstein. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A illustration of the mural. It has a blue background with white, yellow and darker blue objects suggesting birds and marshland.

    An early sketch of Tess's mural.

Mural title: “Saltgrass”

Artist: Laurel Picklum
Theme: Tidal/marsh

Closely following Tess’s tidal mural is Laurel Picklum’s, also based on the same biological theme. She used Bay View’s surrounding marshes as inspiration, and her upbringing and career path certainly show up in her work. Laurel was raised by nature-loving scientists and completed the Natural Science Illustration program from the University of Washington. “There are lots of wonderful, precious species living in the Bay Area’s tidal marshes, but saltgrass caught my eye because it looks like plain grass when you’re walking by it,” Laurel says. “But crouch down to take a closer look and you see the intricacies and delicate nature of the plant and its salt jewelry. I wanted to celebrate this little plant and bring the viewer down into that space where it becomes something magnificent.” She calls saltgrass a "testament to adaptability."

Laurel freehanded the layout of the mural onto the wall rather than projecting or gridding out parts of it. “I had to change the final layout from my mockup a bit because of the location of the arrows at the top of the elevator shaft and because I couldn’t reach part of the upper wall,” she explains. “I ended up free handing the grass shapes onto the wall with chalk. I wouldn’t have done it this way if it was a more complex composition, but it worked out well with the saltgrass imagery.”

  • A photograph of the elevator mural. It has a blue background with a green, spiky grass in the foreground.

    Laurel Picklum. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of the elevator mural. It has a blue background with a green, spiky grass in the foreground.

    Laurel Picklum. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • An illustration of the mural. It shows a dark blue background with a green plant, saltgrass, sprouting from the base.

    An early sketch of Laurel's mural.

Mural title: “Natural Attraction”

Artist: Amandalynn
Theme: Grasslands

In the center of the building, you’ll spot Amandalynn’s mural. She typically works on projects of this size, though there were some unique aspects to this particular mural. “The challenge for me was more the fact that it was indoor with a lot more rules around movement and timing,” she says. The Grasslands' theme was perfect for Amandalynn, who says she enjoys incorporating the local ecology into her work. “I also almost always try to paint on a bright green background, so when I was asked to paint the Grasslands area with the theme color of green, the design came quickly.” It took Amandalynn about five days to paint her mural; she began with a charcoal outline of her piece then used all water-based acrylic paints in thin washes. “I’ve found this technique creates a nice sense of fine art within my murals and it uses less material, which lessens the environmental impact of the final product.”

  • A photograph of Amandalynn's elevator mural, which has a black background with green plants and red and pink flowers as well as butterflies.

    Amandalynn. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of Amandalynn's elevator mural, which has a black background with green plants and red and pink flowers as well as butterflies.

    Amandalynn. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • An illustration of plants, flowers, and butterflies.

    An early sketch of Amandalynn's mural.

Mural title: “Mothership Mountain and the Many Moons”

Artist: Victoria Wagner
Theme: Scrubs

On to elevator number seven, featuring Victoria Wagner’s work. Victoria was inspired by the rolling lavender fields of California and other native plants, like yellow yarrow and tumbleweed. “Growing up in the high desert at the foot of the Sierras, it wasn’t a stretch for me to envision the mountains, blooming yellow sage flowers and the sharp light of my youth in that high elevation landscape.”

She uses that idea of elevation in her work. “You cannot help but look up at Bay View! The gift of looking skyward, pausing and allowing your posture to draw up and your chest to fill with air, is a subtle invitation to be at one with the vibration of land, sea and heavens,” Victoria says. “My hope is that the murals invite this kind of engagement and reverie.”

  • A photograph of the mural. There is a low-hanging harvest moon behind the mountains and various circular abstract shapes in the sky.

    Victoria Wagner. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of the mural. There is a low-hanging harvest moon behind the mountains and various circular abstract shapes in the sky.

    Victoria Wagner. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A sketch of the mural; it has a yellow background with a mountainscape against it. There is a low-hanging harvest moon behind the mountains and various circular abstract shapes in the sky.

    An early sketch of Victoria's mural.

Mural title: “Clouds on Earth”

Artist: Mariangela Le Thanh
Theme: Scrubs

The next mural belongs to Mariangela Le Thanh. “I’ve painted some murals in the past but I’ve never worked on anything this large before — most of my paintings are around 10-by-10 inches,” Mariangela says. She said this bigger scale required more planning, and was a learning experience. She took inspiration from her home to create the mural. “I really wanted to paint the landscape that surrounds my home in Northern California. Since the image wraps around itself, I was inspired to paint lives immersed in cycles of clouds and flowers,” Mariangela says. “I hope people are reminded of a nice summer afternoon from their childhood when they look at my mural.”

  • A photograph of Mariangela's mural. The mural shows a sky with pink, fluffy clouds and yellow grasslands and cartoonish green trees.

    Mariangela le Thanh. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of a woman wearing a hard hat and neon vest standing in front of a mural showing yellow grasslands and a cartoon person sitting next to a cartoon dog.

    Mariangela le Thanh standing in front of her mural.

  • A sketch of the mural. Pink clouds float across a blue sky, yellow grasslands are in the foreground beneath it. Various cartoon people and animals are scattered in the field.

    An early sketch of Mariangela's mural.

Mural title: “Love Story of Hummingbirds and Ancestors”

Artist: Adrian Arias
Theme: Scrubs

And mural number nine is by Adrian Arias. He was inspired by a hummingbird that visited his window one day and, surprisingly, settled for a moment. “My connection with hummingbirds is ancestral; it is part of my culture,” Adrian says. “Hummingbirds are sacred messengers between life and death, between what must be transformed to stay alive.” Adrian completed his mural in about four days, and he enjoyed it when construction workers who were working on the building would ask him questions or talk to him while he was painting.

  • A photograph of the mural showing a yellow background with black and white drawings of hummingbirds.

    Adrian Arias. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A photograph of the mural showing a yellow background with black and white drawings of hummingbirds.

    Adrian Arias. Photos via Margaret Austin Photography.

  • A sketch of the mural showing a yellow background with black and white drawings of hummingbirds and an anatomical heart.

    An early sketch of Adrian's mural.

Like many of the artists, Adrian hopes that his mural leaves visitors with a sense of wonder. “I hope they have the feeling of wanting to know more about the images they see.”

Ask a Techspert: What’s breaking my text conversations?

Not to brag, but I have a pretty excellent group chat with my friends. We use it to plan trips, to send happy birthdays and, obviously, to share lots and lots of GIFs. It’s the best — until it’s not. We don’t all have the same kind of phones; we’ve got both Android phones and iPhones in the mix. And sometimes, they don’t play well together. Enter “green bubble issues” — things like, missing read receipts and typing indicators, low-res photos and videos, broken group chats…I could go on describing the various potential communication breakdowns, but you probably know what I’m talking about. Instead, I decided to ask Google’s Elmar Weber: What’s the problem with messaging between different phone platforms?

First, can you tell me what you do at Google?

I lead several engineering organizations including the team that builds Google’s Messages app, which is available on most Android phones today.

OK, then you’re the perfect person to talk to! So my first question: When did this start being a problem? I remember wayback when I had my first Android phone, I would text iPhone friends…and it was fine.

Texting has been around for a long time. Basic SMS texting — which is what you’re talking about here — is 30 years old. SMS, which means Short Message Service, was originally only 160 characters. Back then you couldn’t do things like send photos or reactions or read receipts. In fact, mobile phones weren’t made for messaging, they were designed for making phone calls. To send a message you actually had to hit the number buttons to get to the letters that you’d have to spell out. But people started using it a ton, and it sort of exploded. So this global messaging industry took off. MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) was then introduced in the early 2000s, which let people send photos and videos for the first time. But that came with a lot of limitations too.

Got it. Then the messaging apps all started building their own systems to support modern messaging features like emoji reactions and typing indicators, because SMS/MMS were created long before those things were even dreamed of?

Yes, exactly.

I guess…we need a new SMS?

Well the new SMS is RCS, which stands for Rich Communication Services. It enables things like high-resolution photo and video sharing, read receipts, emoji reactions, better security and privacy with end-to-end encryption and more. Most major carriers support RCS, and Android users have been using it for years.

How long has RCS been around?

Version one of RCS was released December 15, 2008.

Who made it?

RCS isn’t a messaging app like Messages or WhatsApp — it’s an industry-wide standard. Similar to other technical standards (USB, 5G, email), it was developed by a group of different companies. In the case of RCS, it was coordinated by an association of global wireless operators, hardware chip makers and other industry players.

RCS makes messaging better, so if Android phones use this, then why are texts from iPhones still breaking? RCS sounds like an upgrade — so shouldn’t that fix everything?

There’s the hitch! So Android phones use RCS, and iPhones still don’t. iPhones still rely on SMS and MMS for conversations with Android users, which is why your group chats feel so outdated. Think of it like this: If you have two groups of people who use different spoken languages, they can communicate effectively in their respective languages to other people who speak their language, but they can’t talk to each other. And when they try to talk to one another, they have to act out what they're saying, as though they're playing charades. Now think of RCS as a magic translator that helps multiple groups speak fluently — but every group has to use the translator, and if one doesn’t, they’re each going to need to use motions again.

Do you think iPhones will start using RCS too?

I hope so! It’s not just about things like the typing indicators, read receipts or emoji reactions — everyone should be able to pick up their phone and have a secure, modern messaging experience. Anyone who has a phone number should get that, and that’s been lost a little bit because we’re still finding ourselves using outdated messaging systems. But the good news is that RCS could bring that back and connect all smartphone users, and because so many different companies and carriers are working together on it, the future is bright.

Check outAndroid.com/GetTheMessageto learn why now is the time for Apple to fix texting.

I’m excellent at planning vacations — steal my tips

I once read that the happiest part of traveling is the planning, and I couldn’t agree more. Before I board a plane, I spend hours researching and documenting the what, where and how of my vacation. Over the past two years I’ve traveled far less than usual, but this year my husband and I decided to go to Italy. It was our first time there, and one of our biggest trips since COVID hit, so I took prepping to a new level. Here’s how I, a self-proclaimed travel nerd, used Google tools to get ready for my getaway.

  1. Get everyone on board with Google Slides.

About a month before our trip, I realized we’d done it all wrong. We weren’t going to have enough time to go hiking, and we were adding unnecessary hours of driving — and with increasing gas prices, that would end up costing way too much. Telling your travel partner you want to start over mere weeks before your trip is tough, and I knew I needed to really sell it…so I made a Google Slides presentation.

A screenshot of a Google Slide presentation in edit mode. The main slide on the screen shows a photo of a Google Map route through Italy and text to the left of the map shows a run down of vacation days segmented by how “chill” they are.

One of the many slides I used to convince my husband we needed to replan our trip.

I’ve used Slides for vacation planning in the past, too — and not just to blow everything up and start over. I’ve also presented what I’ve learned about various travel destinations we’re considering to make a decision. This helps me think clearly about what I want out of a vacation; it feels a bit like I’m vision-boarding the potential trip. And apparently it’s a great selling point, because my husband was completely on board by the end of the presentation.

2. Go off the beaten path with Google Maps.

I often find myself aimlessly “wandering” around Google Maps and Street View, looking for unusually shaped peninsulas or clicking into 360-degree photos that seem impossible to have captured. It’s a great way to cure wanderlust from home, but it’s also an effective way to plan travel. This was how I found a few of our stops in Italy.

Animated GIF of a Google Map showing Italy; the cursor zooms in to Lake Garda revealing the small town of Sirmione.

A little Google Maps “wandering” led me to the town of Sirmione. It caught my eye because it’s basically an island in Italy’s Lake Garda: A narrow road connects Sirmione to the mainland; it’s so tiny that most people park on one side and walk over to the rest of the city, going by foot or golf cart.

An aerial photograph of a town surrounded by water.

An aerial shot of Sirmione taken by my husband.

It’s a place I’ve never heard of, and likely never would have gone.

This is also how we found one of our favorites hikes. The Dolomites are massive — choosing where to visit was overwhelming. But my husband noticed an interesting looking area on Google Earth called Seceda (the fact that it was labeled “Seceda famous view” on Google Maps didn’t hurt our interest either). That was enough for us to add it to our itinerary, and I couldn’t be happier that we did — see for yourself.

A photograph of a mountain landscape, with a dramatically slanted mountain in the foreground that reveals a green pasture on one side and a rocky wall on the other.

3. Take organization to another level with Google Sheets.

Using Google Sheets to organize various parts of a trip is admittedly very obvious compared to my first two tips, but here’s how I like to set things up: I have three pages in a Sheet file — one that functions as a list of things to do in each location, one that lists all of our reservation information and a last tab to collect expenses as we accumulate them while planning and during the course of the trip.

A screenshot of a Google Sheets document showing a list of cities in Italy with various attributes across the sheet listing things like dates, food options, bars, etc.

I like to think of everything listed on this first tab as something potentially worth checking out versus something that’s set in stone. This way, we don’t have to waste time while there looking things up — now if we’re ever wondering “what should we do here?” we can turn to the list for quick, easy access to already researched options.

4. Hit the Search bar…and then the Save button.

I’ve always found it easy to find amazing restaurants and shops when I want to travel, but not quite as simple to grasp what the best outdoor areas are — I want to find the best spot for a sunset, or a viewpoint for an afternoon walk. I’ve found more than a few breathtaking sights by heading to Search and simply entering the name of the city I’m visiting. On the right-hand side, there’s a Knowledge Panel about the location with information like the weather, elevation and local time. Below this is a section that says “Plan a trip,” and underneath that a camera icon next to the words “Things to do.”

And that is how I found arguably the cutest landmark in existence, this “Kiss…Please” sign in Sirmione.

A screenshot of the “Things to do” tab on google.com/travel that’s pulled up the “Kiss…please” landmark. The panel shows various photos and a save option in the right hand corner.

I saved the location straight from this panel so it automatically saved to google.com/travel, and we easily found it when we stopped in the city.

Two people standing in front of a sign that reads “kiss…please” and shows two icons kissing. The two people are also kissing. There is a lake and walkway in the background.

We had to!

5. Stay on budget with a bunch of Google tools.

Traveling is expensive, and while this was definitely a trip we planned and saved for, we were very conscious of not exceeding our budget. I used three Google tools to help us do that. First up, Google Flights. Ahead of buying our flights, I created various alerts to airports in Italy to find the best price and timing. (I also used this feature to price hotels.) Then, while we were there, we used Google Maps’ toll feature, so we could avoid more expensive routes. And of course, there’s the aforementioned Google Sheets tab to collect expenses.

All of these things helped me plan (and thoroughly enjoy planning) my trip — and obviously enjoy the trip itself. Whenever you take your next vacation, hopefully these tips are just as useful for you.

Source: Maps


I’m excellent at planning vacations — steal my tips

I once read that the happiest part of traveling is the planning, and I couldn’t agree more. Before I board a plane, I spend hours researching and documenting the what, where and how of my vacation. Over the past two years I’ve traveled far less than usual, but this year my husband and I decided to go to Italy. It was our first time there, and one of our biggest trips since COVID hit, so I took prepping to a new level. Here’s how I, a self-proclaimed travel nerd, used Google tools to get ready for my getaway.

  1. Get everyone on board with Google Slides.

About a month before our trip, I realized we’d done it all wrong. We weren’t going to have enough time to go hiking, and we were adding unnecessary hours of driving — and with increasing gas prices, that would end up costing way too much. Telling your travel partner you want to start over mere weeks before your trip is tough, and I knew I needed to really sell it…so I made a Google Slides presentation.

A screenshot of a Google Slide presentation in edit mode. The main slide on the screen shows a photo of a Google Map route through Italy and text to the left of the map shows a run down of vacation days segmented by how “chill” they are.

One of the many slides I used to convince my husband we needed to replan our trip.

I’ve used Slides for vacation planning in the past, too — and not just to blow everything up and start over. I’ve also presented what I’ve learned about various travel destinations we’re considering to make a decision. This helps me think clearly about what I want out of a vacation; it feels a bit like I’m vision-boarding the potential trip. And apparently it’s a great selling point, because my husband was completely on board by the end of the presentation.

2. Go off the beaten path with Google Maps.

I often find myself aimlessly “wandering” around Google Maps and Street View, looking for unusually shaped peninsulas or clicking into 360-degree photos that seem impossible to have captured. It’s a great way to cure wanderlust from home, but it’s also an effective way to plan travel. This was how I found a few of our stops in Italy.

Animated GIF of a Google Map showing Italy; the cursor zooms in to Lake Garda revealing the small town of Sirmione.

A little Google Maps “wandering” led me to the town of Sirmione. It caught my eye because it’s basically an island in Italy’s Lake Garda: A narrow road connects Sirmione to the mainland; it’s so tiny that most people park on one side and walk over to the rest of the city, going by foot or golf cart.

An aerial photograph of a town surrounded by water.

An aerial shot of Sirmione taken by my husband.

It’s a place I’ve never heard of, and likely never would have gone.

This is also how we found one of our favorites hikes. The Dolomites are massive — choosing where to visit was overwhelming. But my husband noticed an interesting looking area on Google Earth called Seceda (the fact that it was labeled “Seceda famous view” on Google Maps didn’t hurt our interest either). That was enough for us to add it to our itinerary, and I couldn’t be happier that we did — see for yourself.

A photograph of a mountain landscape, with a dramatically slanted mountain in the foreground that reveals a green pasture on one side and a rocky wall on the other.

3. Take organization to another level with Google Sheets.

Using Google Sheets to organize various parts of a trip is admittedly very obvious compared to my first two tips, but here’s how I like to set things up: I have three pages in a Sheet file — one that functions as a list of things to do in each location, one that lists all of our reservation information and a last tab to collect expenses as we accumulate them while planning and during the course of the trip.

A screenshot of a Google Sheets document showing a list of cities in Italy with various attributes across the sheet listing things like dates, food options, bars, etc.

I like to think of everything listed on this first tab as something potentially worth checking out versus something that’s set in stone. This way, we don’t have to waste time while there looking things up — now if we’re ever wondering “what should we do here?” we can turn to the list for quick, easy access to already researched options.

4. Hit the Search bar…and then the Save button.

I’ve always found it easy to find amazing restaurants and shops when I want to travel, but not quite as simple to grasp what the best outdoor areas are — I want to find the best spot for a sunset, or a viewpoint for an afternoon walk. I’ve found more than a few breathtaking sights by heading to Search and simply entering the name of the city I’m visiting. On the right-hand side, there’s a Knowledge Panel about the location with information like the weather, elevation and local time. Below this is a section that says “Plan a trip,” and underneath that a camera icon next to the words “Things to do.”

And that is how I found arguably the cutest landmark in existence, this “Kiss…Please” sign in Sirmione.

A screenshot of the “Things to do” tab on google.com/travel that’s pulled up the “Kiss…please” landmark. The panel shows various photos and a save option in the right hand corner.

I saved the location straight from this panel so it automatically saved to google.com/travel, and we easily found it when we stopped in the city.

Two people standing in front of a sign that reads “kiss…please” and shows two icons kissing. The two people are also kissing. There is a lake and walkway in the background.

We had to!

5. Stay on budget with a bunch of Google tools.

Traveling is expensive, and while this was definitely a trip we planned and saved for, we were very conscious of not exceeding our budget. I used three Google tools to help us do that. First up, Google Flights. Ahead of buying our flights, I created various alerts to airports in Italy to find the best price and timing. (I also used this feature to price hotels.) Then, while we were there, we used Google Maps’ toll feature, so we could avoid more expensive routes. And of course, there’s the aforementioned Google Sheets tab to collect expenses.

All of these things helped me plan (and thoroughly enjoy planning) my trip — and obviously enjoy the trip itself. Whenever you take your next vacation, hopefully these tips are just as useful for you.

Source: Maps