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Rhiannon Bell: Designing the future of search at Google

·20 min·1 clip

Rhiannon Bell explains why generative AI is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redesign Google Search from scratch.

1. Design Better hosts Eli Woolery and Aaron Walter interview Rhiannon Bell, VP of UX for Google Search, about redesigning Search in the era of generative AI. 2. Bell has been at Google for seven years — four years in ads, then transitioning to Search — giving her a grounded view of both the business and user sides of the product. 3. The episode's core thesis is that generative AI is a once-in-27-years opportunity to redesign Search from first principles, and Bell argues her team is treating it as a genuine blank slate. 4. Bell describes AI mode, announced at Google I/O on May 20th, as 'our most powerful AI search to date' — a conversational, headless search experience layered on top of traditional results. 5. She distinguishes between AI mode as a standalone interface and the long-term goal of folding those capabilities into core Search over time, starting with AI overviews. 6. On multimodality, Bell says future Search will shift fluidly between text, voice, images, and video — she demonstrated this personally at a plant store, using Lens and AI mode to identify sun-tolerant indoor plants. 7. The plant store interaction revealed a design principle: when AI responses alone aren't sufficient, the system surfaces trusted websites, illustrating that 'you can't have one without the other.' 8. Bell pushes back gently on the framing that Google is becoming a destination that displaces the open web — she argues AI overviews are sending 'higher quality traffic' to publishers because users arrive already knowing which destination is right for them. 9. On provenance and trust, Bell acknowledges that AI synthesis buries attribution, and says Google's response is to surface 'trust signals' and 'supporting content' alongside AI responses so users can verify and continue their journeys. 10. She references friend-of-the-show Bob Baxley's LinkedIn post on whether visual UI will disappear in a conversational-first world, agreeing that multimodality — not pure conversation — is where Search is heading. 11. Bell sees AI enabling Google's original mission — 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful' — in ways that were previously impossible, citing Agentive features like booking tickets or tracking availability. 12. On agentic design, she emphasizes that trust is 'twofold' and 'particularly important in Search' but the transcript cuts off before she completes this thread. 13. The education question surfaces when host Eli Woolery describes using ChatGPT with his daughter on math problems — and worries AI will cause students to offload thinking rather than learn. 14. Bell says Google has 'always had principles around never giving the answer' for education products, and argues those principles still apply today. 15. She raises the question of whether the learning evaluation paradigm itself should change — suggesting vivas and whiteboard demonstrations might replace essay-writing assessments as AI becomes pervasive. 16. Bell argues the real design work is helping users 'step through a particular problem' using stepper UI, guided narration, and generative diagrams tailored to each learner's level. 17. The episode is a structured interview, with Woolery and Walter asking probing follow-up questions; Bell's responses are detailed but sometimes drift into corporate framing before returning to concrete examples. 18. Bell is animated and specific when discussing her own product interactions — the plant store and outdoor lighting shopping stories are the most vivid moments in the conversation. 19. Listeners interested in AI product design, search UX, or the business dynamics of Google's AI transition will find this episode directly relevant. 20. Listeners wanting deep technical AI architecture detail or critical perspectives on Google's market power will find this episode too product-promotional.

As heard by us

A sharp conversation on AI search, provenance, and the business cost of making trust invisible.

Search is treated here as a product trust problem, not just a UX challenge. Rhiannon Bell, VP of User Experience for Google Search, talks through how a service people use dozens of times a day has to read intent, context, and credibility while generative AI changes what an…

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If search is changing under your feet, this gives you the design lens.

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