Designing intelligent cross-app moments across Gmail, Calendar, Keep and Google productivity tools
Arash Hamdami
Project Highlights
Platform
Desktop
Timeline
11 Months
Role
Lead Product Designer
Industry
Technology
Project overview
At Google, I worked on a UX initiative focused on creating smart micro-interactions across Google Workspace products, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Keep and other productivity tools.
The idea was to identify moments where users naturally express intent inside one product and help them complete the related action without needing to manually switch context.
For example, when a user is composing an email in Gmail and writes something like:
“Let’s meet next Tuesday at 2pm.”
Gmail could recognise this as a potential meeting moment and show a subtle contextual prompt such as:
“Create event in Calendar?”
From there, the user could create a calendar event with the date, time, title and attendees already pre-filled.
The experience was not about adding a large new feature. It was about designing small, intelligent moments that reduced friction in everyday workflows. These micro-interactions helped bridge the gap between products and made Google’s ecosystem feel more joined up.
Company background
Google is one of the world’s largest technology companies, with products used by billions of people across search, communication, productivity, cloud, advertising, mobile and AI-powered services.
Google Workspace includes tools such as Gmail, Calendar, Keep, Drive, Docs, Meet and Tasks. These products are used daily by individuals, teams and businesses to communicate, organise work, manage time and collaborate.
Although each product is powerful on its own, users often move between several Google apps to complete a single workflow. For example, an email conversation might lead to a calendar event, a note, a reminder or a task. The opportunity was to make these transitions feel more seamless and intelligent.
The project sat within this wider ecosystem challenge: how can Google products better understand user intent and support the next action without creating extra complexity?
Team structure
I worked as part of a cross-functional Google product environment, collaborating with stakeholders across design, product and engineering.
The team structure included:
- Product Designers responsible for interaction patterns, interface design and cross-product consistency.
- Product Managers responsible for defining user value, product priorities and feature scope.
- Engineers responsible for technical feasibility, implementation behaviour and system logic.
- UX Researchers supporting validation around usefulness, timing, trust and user expectations.
- Content / UX Writing stakeholders helping shape concise, helpful and non-intrusive prompt language.
- Google Workspace stakeholders ensuring the pattern could align with Gmail, Calendar, Keep and other connected product experiences.
My role focused on UX and interaction design, particularly how these smart prompts should behave inside existing user journeys. I explored prompt placement, visibility, dismissal states, confirmation flows, empty/error states and how the interaction could scale across different Google products.
Because this was a cross-product experience, collaboration was important. The design could not feel like a one-off Gmail feature. It needed to work as a reusable interaction model that felt consistent across the wider Google Workspace ecosystem.
The Challenge
Users often reveal their intent naturally while using Google products, but the next action usually happens in another app.
For example, a user may be writing an email in Gmail and type:
“Let’s meet next Tuesday at 2pm.”
Although the intent is clear, the user still has to manually open Google Calendar, create a new event, copy the meeting details, add attendees, save the event and then return to Gmail. This creates unnecessary friction for a simple productivity task.
The challenge was to design a smarter, more connected experience across Google Workspace where Gmail, Calendar, Keep and other Google apps could recognise useful moments of intent and suggest the right next action in context.
The experience needed to be helpful without becoming intrusive. Smart suggestions had to appear at the right time, feel easy to dismiss and always keep the user in control. The interaction also needed to scale across multiple Google products, so the same pattern could support actions such as creating a Calendar event, saving information to Keep or turning an email into a task.
The core UX challenge was:
How might we help users act on their intent at the moment it appears, without forcing them to leave their current workflow?
The Solution
I designed a smart micro-interaction pattern that helped users move from written intent to action without breaking their flow.
In Gmail, when a user typed a phrase containing a date, time or meeting intent, the interface could display a subtle contextual prompt such as:
“Create event in Calendar?”
The user could then select the prompt, review a pre-filled event preview and confirm the action. Details such as the event title, date, time and recipients could be carried across automatically,
reducing the amount of manual input required.
The solution followed a simple interaction model:
Intent detected → Smart suggestion appears → User reviews details → Action is confirmed → Feedback is shown
This pattern made Gmail feel more intelligently connected to Calendar while still allowing the user to stay focused on the email they were writing.
The same approach could also be extended across other Google Workspace journeys, such as:
- Saving useful email content to Google Keep
- Creating reminders from notes
- Turning email action points into Google Tasks
- Linking dates and deadlines to Calendar
- Suggesting follow-up actions from message content
The solution was intentionally lightweight. It avoided large modals or disruptive overlays and instead used small, contextual prompts that supported the user at the moment of need.
Impact
The redesigned British Gas Business Account Management Portal created a clearer, more self-service digital experience for customers managing energy accounts online. By restructuring the portal around the tasks customers needed to complete most often, the redesign reduced friction across billing, payments, meter readings, usage insights, documents and support journeys.
Improved account visibility The redesigned dashboard gave customers a clearer view of their account status, including billing information, payment position, meter reading prompts, usage insights and support updates. This helped users quickly understand what needed attention without searching across multiple areas of the portal.
Faster self-service task completion Key journeys such as viewing bills, submitting meter readings, checking payments and accessing documents were reorganised into clearer task-led flows. This reduced the effort required to complete routine account-management tasks and helped customers manage their energy accounts with greater confidence.
Reduced customer support dependency By making common actions easier to find and complete online, the portal supported a stronger self-service model. Customers were less reliant on contacting support teams for routine account queries, allowing support channels to focus on more complex issues.
Better understanding of energy usage Working with the Head of Data Science, the experience introduced clearer ways to surface customer and usage data. This helped business customers better understand consumption patterns, identify important changes and make more informed decisions about their energy management.
Stronger support for multi-site customers The redesigned information architecture made it easier for customers with multiple premises, meters or contracts to navigate between accounts and understand site-specific information. This created a more scalable experience for both small businesses and larger organisations.
A more scalable digital foundation The redesign established a clearer structure for future portal improvements, including data-led insights, improved account summaries and expanded self-service functionality across the British Gas Business digital experience.