Google Admin Console
The problem
The Google Admin Console is a central place to manage Google Workspace services. However, users, known as Administrators, faced challenges using a complex user interface to carry out tasks. They also needed help with onboarding, setting up and managing ChromeOS devices, and knowing what the best settings, called policies, were for their organisation.
Solution
Create an interactive guide to help Administrators carry out key tasks.
How I helped
Having analysed the issues users faced, I worked with Researchers, Designers, Product Managers and Engineers to create a series of interactive guides. These aimed to walk Administrators through the key steps and actions they needed to take to set up their environments. Below, you can learn more about our challenges and outcomes.
What's the Google Admin console?
The Google Admin console is a central dashboard, or hub, for managing Chrome devices and Google Workspace services. It’s a powerful tool that can help users manage their Workspace environment, including users, devices, apps, billing, and more. And all in one place.
Who manages it?
Only people with Administrator accounts can access the Admin console. However, Super Administrators can assign roles with varying management capabilities. This allows administrators to delegate tasks and responsibilities without giving everyone Super Admin privileges, which helps to keep businesses and digital domains secure.
What can you do with it?
• Create and manage user accounts
• Add and remove devices
• Install and manage apps
• Set billing preferences
• View reports on usage and security
• Get help and support
Great, so it’s really easy to use?
Not really.
And in an effort to help with this, user guides were created by the ChromeOS team covering a range of topics, including how to manage users, devices, and apps, as well as troubleshooting problems.
So that solved the problem?
Alas, no. Analytics highlighted that few Administrators were accessing the guides.
What happened next?
User research sessions were set up. The users ranged from IT professionals with 30 or more years tech experience to small business owners and school administrators juggling umpteen tasks.
We needed to understand more about the specific pain points in the journey. Why are users struggling so much?
It was highlighted in the research that the following user types all had the same persistent problems, across similar areas of the journey.
User types
School administrator
Inexperienced user. Hectic environment. Trying to manage dozens of Chromebooks.
IT administrator
IT administrators are core device decision makers. Our participant was experienced. At least 30 years working in IT.
Owner of a small business
Relatively inexperienced. Trying to manage users and devices.
Persistent problems
1 Unclear signposting
2 Terminology
3 Complex system
4 Lack of information
Where users struggled
Research found some of the most common problems reported by users to be:
Onboarding. Setting up ChromeOS devices and knowing what the best settings (policies) are for their organisation
A complex and difficult to navigate interface
Feature-heavy. It can be hard to find information.
It can be tricky to keep track of changes as the console is constantly being updated.
Lack of guidance. Users have reported that the console is not always clear about what policies (settings) do or how they affect them.
Other issues reported by users:The updates feature isn’t always easy to understand. For example..
What solution was proposed?
A decision was made to create updated, interactive guides in the form of an onboarding journey. This would be more helpful for administrators who could then carry out 8 key tasks to get a better understanding of the most important areas of the Admin Console.
What we did
We created a series of guides in the form of an interactive walkthrough. I worked with the team on the copy for each section and collaborated with other Google UXWs for feedback as we progressed.
The prototype was tested again with the same user types from the research sessions.
The result
They loved it. After we pushed the guides live, analytics showed that within a few weeks there had been a significant uptake compared with the previous format, and 863 Administrators had started walkthroughs to complete 1,500 guides.