The GUXIES | Founding member and design lead
A once-a-year, global Google UX awards show
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In the midst of all the 2022-2023 layoffs, there were signals from the Google UX’ers that clearly said moral was low, and something had to be done to uplift our community in the face of adversity. Enter The GUXIES (guck-seez) an annual global Google UX awards program that's scrappy in format but serious in heart. What started as me raising a concern during an all hands, turned into a beautiful way to recognize the UX community and culture at Google. Our pilot had 300+ nominations (across UX disciplines, PAs, and regions) 200+ entries submitted. Judged by 40 L8+ UX leads from 13 product areas and 20 awards were given. Insane!
Critical challenge
How might we create something meaningful, and sustainable, not just out of thin air - something that was based on real insights and signals from the UX community.
Branding explorations
What I loved about this project
So much. I’m a strong advocate for design community and culture and being able to build something with so much meaning and purpose in people’s lives from the ground up, is what I enjoy most about being a designer. The GUXIES provided a much needed morale boost, at the right time. Even throughout our adjustments, interest never waned. In the end, GUXIES landed better than we hoped and the community let us know. Whether it was participants, judges or leads that championed the work; it was clear that the act of recognizing others and being seen by the global community was needed. Also, just being able to have visibility over all of the amazing work being done across Google (that I normally wouldn’t get to dive into) was an award itself!
Key contributions
Creation, strategy, comms, design team lead, design execution, branding
Some of the 20+ categories returning this year
Outcomes
Globally, we received a total of 304 nominations, 190 which were peer nominations. All-in-all, 212 UXers submitted materials for judging. We were able to recruit and get commitment from 40 UX leads, sitting across 13 PAs and 25 teams who generously lent their time, energy and effort to judge the nominations and select the 20 winners from 20 unique categories…and got 1 person promoted!
