It is just rebranded UX Design, and a pretty oversimplified version of it. A few years ago, Google leadership initiated a "Product Excellence" initiative, the

It is just rebranded UX Design, and a pretty oversimplified version of it. A few years ago, Google leadership initiated a "Product Excellence" initiative, the cornerstone of which was identifying and measuring CUJs, with the specific goal of improving UI/UX execution. This was because the UX of a lot of Google products was, well, not great. Implementation quality was low, in many cases because engineers were building what they wanted and not what was specified or designed. After all, it's an engineering company and this is ingrained in the culture. CUJs were a tool to rally people around building the right things at a high (enough) quality. I'm not sure why they created new terminology. Either way, it was mostly effective. I wouldn't call most Google UIs "excellent" but they are at least passing usability benchmarks now. An added side effect is that this methodology, like design sprints, created a new thing for evangelists to evangelize at Google and beyond. Hence the article. Source: Grouchy Googler.