Amruta Buge

3D and AR Search

Over 2020, I worked on the Smartphone AR team and contributed to numerous 3D and augmented reality (AR) launches on Google Search.

Role and responsibilities

Day to day, I worked as an Interaction Designer and unofficially as a Product Manager — driving a lot of work from concept to launch.

AR Athletes

I joined the Augmented Reality team in Feb 2020 and secured approval for a launch critical cross-PA (product area) Search project within less than a month. Helped inform early product strategy, content strategy, and approved new patterns from leadership featuring 10 Olympic athletes across OSRPs (organized search results page).

Understood product goals, ramped up quickly, and secured approval for a launch critical, cross-PA wide project within less than one month of joining the team
Introduced and drove approval for two Search patterns 1) carousel cards to solve user pain points around discoverability of 3D/AR content on the search results page. Took into consideration engineering limitations to enable scalability. 2) Imagery bleed outside card specifically transparent video backgrounds. Pitched and secured buy-in from Search Director
Served as a strong collaboration partner to PM lead, together we brainstormed, advocated, and secured multiple entry points
Received two peer bonuses within first month from UXR and UXW leads

Entry points

The entry points for 3D/AR Athletes appear on athlete queries (previously included "olympics"). For example, searching for athlete Simone Biles features a carousel to see Biles perform her best moves visually up close in your space. The placement for this is in Search's knowledge panel — we decided upon this placement because it sits naturally alongside her info from the KG (images, wiki–bio, stats, etc).

For the "olympics" query we featured a carousel of the 9 participating athletes (Steph Curry was left out because he did not participate in the event). As a future vision, for sport queries (i.e., Basketball) we discussed presenting a carousel of entry points in the sport KG to learn directly from world-class athletes in your own space. See Steph's 3-pointer shot, Watch Steph Curry's layup, Checkout Steph Curry dribbling.

AR Athletes debuted at Google I/O in 2021

Easter Bunny

We launched a 3D & AR Easter Bunny entry point in the Easter Bunny OSRP (organized search results page) partnering cross–PA with the Delight Search team to help bring joy and Easter cheer to people unable to leave their homes due to COVID–19.

Search CTR 28%, 1.4M impressions, and 400k interactions
Search CTR 38% on Easter day 04/12/20
CTR highlights from specific locales: Chile 65%, Brazil 50%, UK 37%, USA 25%

The quick turnaround for this launch required significant cross-team and cross-PA coordination and collaboration (product, eng, content, marketing, UX, immersive arts, Daydream and Search leadership, etc). For example, constructing the right headline with UXW lead and exploring multiple options enabled us to quickly translate and get launch ready in 14+ languages in less than 2 days.

Education

The Covid-19 pandemic pushed students to learn remotely and halted their access to classroom tools. We think 3D and AR objects can be powerful learning tools. For example, while studying from home, a student reading about the skeletal system can view a life-sized human model up close with just a search on their phone.

Collaborated cross-PA with the Search Education team and launched 62 AR entry points: 14 human anatomical systems, 23 cellular structures, 16 chemistry terms, 8 biological terms, and 1 physics term.
Metrics: 1M+ queries, 78K interactions, and total CTR 6%, with Human Skeleton 28%, Plant cell 22%
Received a spot bonus from Search's Eng Director for Concept AR contributions to the Economic Opportunity Covid Response Effort.
AR Education was presented at Search On 2020 by Aparna Chennapragada (former VP). Watch the event here.

At times seeing is understanding so it can be more powerful to see the inner workings of a plant cell than to read about it. — Watch Aparna Chennapragada, Former Google VP share about AR Learning here.

Dinosaurs

With the Covid-19 pandemic, Dinosaurs and Educational AR concepts were critical to improving learning outside classroom, and helping users find joy during quarantine with prehistoric dinosaurs. We partnered with Universal Studios (Jurassic World) to launch 10 dinosaurs.

Metrics: Search CTR 25%. In first week: +300% queries increase, ~65% CTR, 2M total sessions
70+ unique articles in press/media
Oversaw end-to-end UX for Search and Scene Viewer (AR platform), tested entry points in code, finalized copy with UXW, and created marketing assets for Google Search's homepage promotion. Received peer bonus from marketing lead "...our animals HPP had 3X higher CTR than an average HPP".

Last year, when many of us first started sheltering in place, families around the world found joy in AR...people interacted with this feature more than 200 million times. — Google I/O 2021.

Framework

After numerous back-to-back launches, put together a framework to scale the delivery of future content releases and reduce production level involvement of the UX team. The framework presents best practices for integrating 3D and AR entry points on Google Search and helps stakeholders—internal and external understand our end-to-end process.

Recognized the opportunity to scale delivery of future XFN and cross-PA content launches for AR in Search
Took the initiative and ownership to define a process and strategy for expedited delivery, thereby reducing daily UX involvement for production level needs, and contributed to high team effectiveness
Worked closely with Immersive Art leads to ensure scalability of imagery content, with UXW lead to incorporate common string options, and PM and Eng to ensure critical use cases were accounted

In addition to these launches, I pitched and contributed to product definitions of "Assetless AR" and 3D/AR experiences on Google Shopping Search and Property. Assetless AR helps consumers visually understand the fit of various home goods (i.e. TVs, rugs, chairs, etc) in their own space before purchase, and also helps merchants without access to 3D assets reach more buyers.

Reach out to learn more about my experience! Visit this link to see a list of all 3D and AR objects on Search today.