Understanding how multiple numbers help people manage relationships and privacy for Google Voice

Google Voice app aggregates and provides users with a single number for all their phones and voicemail as easy as email. This service provides free US long distance calling and international calling at lower rates to the consumers.

Context:

To understand the audience type that Google Voice should be targeting for gaining market share, Google Voice launched a study understand the pain points of users who have multiple phone numbers and needs which make this aggregation seamless.

My Role:

I led the qualitative research and planned and conducted the same with people who use multiple phone numbers. To cover a wide range of audience, in depth phone interviews were conducted with users across the US who used Google Voice and those who used other ways to manage multiple phone numbers . Over 20 participants were interviewed on their calling habits to understand the need of an extra number both at home and at work. With these learnings, I defined various use cases of having multiple phone numbers and the pain points that users went through around the usage of multiple numbers. I developed a framework with different types of users having multiple phone numbers that defined the new direction of the Google Voice app.

After the study, findings were collated and triangulated with the survey data. A specific persona with various use cases and pain points was defined to help the product and marketing team to make an informed decision around whom to targeting of the Google Voice app. I contributed to discussions defining new features and the repositioning of the app.