# Esther Leong > Product Design — Google Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/estherleong Over 15 years in, and the problems I love most are still the ones nobody quite knows how to frame yet — the gnarly intersection of AI, hardware, and human behavior where design has to do a lot of heavy lifting. Wearables, AR, AI, hardware — wherever the playbooks don't exist yet, that's where I want to be. Always happy to connect with others thinking about complex systems and the humans who use them. ## Work Experience ### Gemini Conversation Experience Lead @ Google DeepMind Jan 2024 – Present Conversation experience lead for Gemini, defining the response framework that governs how users and AI interact across mobile, web, and wearables. I bring systems-level information architecture thinking to the challenge of making generative AI feel coherent, trustworthy, and navigable at scale. • Led Answers design for Gemini on Watch, achieving 84.7% response favorability — outperforming Gemini on Android (71.5%) — and 79.9% week-over-week retention, more than double the phone surface • Drove a rapid media sharing overhaul in under 3 weeks, resulting in a +130% increase in image-conversation shares and measurable DAU growth • Championed and led the holistic redesign of the Gemini Conversation/Response Framework, establishing a scalable, UXR-grounded foundation across the product • Expanded Gemini's user feedback system (2UP) from web-only to mobile, closing a gap that had excluded preference signals from 70%+ of app traffic • Led Intent Chips and Autosuggest design to reduce drop-off on the Gemini landing page, using UXR and usage data to prioritize top user intents • Designer on Gemini Memory & Personalization, defining how AI remembers user context and surfaces that information in ways that feel transparent and trustworthy ### Staff User Experience Designer @ Google Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 Systems design lead for Google's first dockable tablet, reconciling two separate OS stacks — Android and Assistant — into a single, coherent product experience. I navigated one of the most complex multi-PA, multi-platform integration efforts in the Home portfolio. • Look & Talk feature won a Red Dot Design Award, plus two Fast Company Innovation by Design honorable mentions • Awarded patent for Google Pixel Dockable Tablet • Achieved cross-PA alignment to introduce Hub Mode as a new top-level system setting, directly contributing to Assistant OKRs • Advocated for and landed Guest Hotword across device states after 1.5 years of sustained cross-functional effort • Go-to designer for identity and authentication on non-mobile Assistant devices, including emerging LLM-in-the-home scenarios • Recognized by Android engineering leadership (L7) for strategic cross-team thinking and reducing escalations across the Android partnership ### Senior User Experience Designer @ Google Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 Core information architect for Google's smart display platform, defining the navigational framework and communal interaction models that shaped how families use shared devices in the home. I drove cross-PA alignment on some of the most structurally ambiguous problems in the Assistant ecosystem. • Led core information architecture for Google's smart display navigational framework redesign • Organized and led cross-PA Family Hub design workshop, directly influencing the product direction for communal smart display experiences • Served as interim Smart Displays Framework Lead, successfully shipping releases R30–33 Drove system architecture across 7+ work streams for the dockable tablet program, coordinating across Android, Nest, Assistant, and Material teams • Owned Voice Fulfillment framework: voice navigation, system gestures, authentication routing, and error handling across multiple modalities and user states ### Principal UX Designer @ Seismic Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 Interaction design lead for powered clothing, a category at the frontier of wearable technology with no established design conventions. I defined how embedded garment technology communicates with the human body to reduce strain and extend physical capability. ### Lead UX Designer @ VMware Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 Product designer spanning visual and interaction design for enterprise software, responsible for design systems and product strategy across major releases. I built the organizational muscle for design advocacy — learning to negotiate with engineering and product in the language of tradeoffs and timelines. ### UX Team Lead @ castAR Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 UX lead for an augmented reality platform, designing 3D spatial interfaces across five distinct input types before the conventions for the medium existed. I hired and mentored the design team while simultaneously working at the intersection of interaction design, spatial UX, and hardware ergonomics. ### Owner, Sr. Interaction Designer @ Plural Designs Jan 2012 – Jan 2016 | Burlingame, CA Developing UX architecture for devices and systems; defining new visions and goals for those devices and their ecosystems, including hand illustrated storyboards, animated presentations, interaction and visual design for advanced prototypes; managing between 3 and 8 designers at any given time. Clients include NASA, Google, Mozilla, Samsung, LG, Pebble GoPro, Lytro, and more. ### Sr. Interaction Designer @ Palm Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 Architect of Enyo & Mochi, Palm's OS-level design language — a system built not just for Palm's own products, but for the third-party developers building on the platform. I helped codify the visual and interaction grammar that WebOS would be known for, at a company whose work the rest of the industry quietly borrowed. ### Interaction Designer @ Palm Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 Foundational interaction design training in one of the most rigorous HI practices in the industry, working on WebOS at the moment touchscreen interaction was being invented. I contributed to gestural navigation and voice interface systems that influenced how mobile UX evolved for a decade. ### Interaction Designer @ Punchcut Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 ## Education ### BA in Illustration Academy of Art University ### Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Academy of Art University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/estherleongvnid - Portfolio: http://plural-designs.com/esther --- Source: https://flows.cv/estherleong JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/estherleong/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13