Google Mobile Labs

Making customer centricity tangible for executive leaders

The brief

Google commissioned a Customer Centricity Study showing that organisations with genuine customer focus outperform their peers commercially. The challenge was turning that finding into something executives could feel, not just read.

Their answer was Mobile Labs. An immersive, single-day interventions where senior leaders watched real customers try to use their own products. Live, unedited, and often uncomfortable. To run these across EMEA, Google partnered with a select group of UX agencies. How Might We was selected as the exclusive African partner, working alongside CX Partners and the wider EMEA team.

What each lab involved

Before the workshop

1. Kickoff
Align on the business challenge, define recruitment criteria, agree on the sessions’ scope.

2. Recruitment
Recruit real customers matched to the client’s actual user base.

3. Facilitated 4×30 minute remote usability tests
Recorded to stream in the workshop day

During the 1 day workshop

3. Streamed usability sessions
The four, unedited, one-on-one sessions streamed as if they were live. Senior leaders observe, often for the first time.

4. Executive workshop
Facilitated interactive session to surface patterns, prioritise improvements, and turn observation into aligned action.

After the workshop day

5. Findings within 24 hours
Recommendations delivered while momentum was still high.

Who we ran Google Mobile labs for 

What came out of it 

Across every lab, the pattern was the same, senior leaders arrived with assumptions and left with evidence. The shift wasn’t just about finding usability problems, it was about making those problems impossible to deprioritise. The project was meant to run for a few months but by popular demand it kept being extended.