Google Photos - Backup Growth

A BIG problem

Google Photos had seen a downward trend in the number of users with backup turned on over the past few years. They had tried many different projects but had made no significant progress. Only about 50% of users had backup turned on when I joined the team to lead backup UX.

A fresh role brings a fresh approach

In my new role, I lead UX for three distinct areas: in-app, Android, and the 3p API. I oversaw the work of two designers while I drove vision, strategy, planning, as well as execution for in-app. I started with reviewing all the previous user research to dig into why users were not backing up. What was their driving factor? When I dug unto it, something kept catching my eye: a large portion of backup off users AND backup on users had incorrectly stated their backup status. Many of those that had backup off thought they had it on. When I reviewed onboarding and the other areas users would turn on backup, the problem became evident. We wanted to show users both options equally because it involved data however because backup drives all of Photos, all it did was confuse the average user. So I drafted a new strategy that made it clear to users from the start what Photos was all about.

The backup growth strategy: Best by Default

I worked with my PM to develop a new strategy I nicknamed "best by default". The core idea was simple: users shouldn't have to guess what path leads to our best. We should default users to our core fundamental function of our app. We would start with onboarding first so we could ensure that new users had the best experience with Photos and got the value quickly to stick around. We also included our in app nudge and totally revamped it with a focus on user images, a cycle of changing designs and messages to keep interest, guidelines to ensure we didn't nag users who wanted to stay backup off, and a one time retention pattern after users turned off backup that followed up with a questionnaire asking why and a response screen that educated them on an aspect of photos that spoke directly to that concern. We also worked to update how users who were setting up a new phone on android opted into backup, again leading into default and added clarity.

Next was the hardest part, alignment. For a fundamental change in our approach I had to drive alignment with legal, leads, and Photos leadership. This meant going deep creating clear and convincing decks, organizing and driving user research to test our assumptions, creating live tests to gather data, working closely with many cross functional teams and culminating with an approval from our VP to move forward.

The unprecedented impact

The result? Unsurpassed and unprecedented impact. We took a downward trend and bounced it right back up. When we launched our first milestone of the project, backup had just dipped below 50%, after the first three months and additional projects launched, we surpassed 70% of Photos users with backup on, thats 30% of Photos active user base turning on backup! We saw more opt-ins in one month on iOS than we saw the past 4 years combined and on Android the strongest month of backups in years. Daily active users went up and Google One sign up went up as well. (Note: I am not able to share finer detail on the metrics due to NDA)

What's next?

There is so much more to do. I have drafted learnings into principles that help guide and speed up decisions for our future projects. I have also created guidelines on when these pattern can be used and how to avoid dark patterns and annoyance. I also am looking on how to add more clarity to users when backup is off and how Photos works differently with backup off. In addition, retention and first backup are a mostly untapped area with lots of opportunity to expand to. Also I am focusing on having the team create a holistic picture of nudges to limit and evolve how we ask based on where the user is in their journey and likelihood of turning on backup to reduce the touches the average users sees.

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