Shaun Alfonso
Google Guide
Functionally focused products, such as large electronics, have sacrificed real-world user experience and satisfaction by fundamentally pursuing effectiveness over usability.
The primary purpose of Google Guide is to automate experiences, services, and activities. Guide optimizes experiences by collecting and sorting user data, which is then analyzed by AI to recognize behaviour patterns. Following user data analysis, Guide AI would then be able to provide custom suggestions and offer to automate repetitive tasks. Google Guide improves the functionality of existing products and services by optimizing the interface and experience for each user. Additionally, it addresses the numerous issues which reduce customer experiences, such as wait times, human error, or inaccessibility.
Insight
In their landmark textbook Interaction Design (2011), Rogers et al. proposed that one of the main goals of interaction design is to minimize the negative characteristics of user experience (e.g.frustration) while increasing the positive aspects (e.g. enjoyment). The authors state that interactive objects are usable if they are easy, effective, and enjoyable. Hence, products that involve user interaction, such as mobile devices, are usually simple and pleasurable to use because they have been designed with usability considerations. However, more functionally focused products, such as appliances, “have been engineered primarily as systems to perform set functions.”
Idea
According to Preece et al., within the sphere of interaction design, the frame of reference has moved from users to context. Through the utilization of user data, a context-aware environment system would be able to deduce the appropriate digital information to provide on a device, what is pertinent to the user at that time, and which action(s) to execute. Abowd and Mynatt, explain that “context-aware” control can go further to “monitor, recognize, and detect deviations in a person's behaviour” to “enable timely, helpful, and even critical information to be provided when considered appropriate.”
Impact
Imagine if artificial intelligence and the omnipotence of Google are constantly working to improve your experiences. Google Guide acts as a conduit to all your other services and products to enable greater ease of use, effectiveness, and enjoyability. Guide anticipates user desires, observes behavioural patterns, executes transactions, and provides contextual information. The mission of Google Guide is to “optimize experiences based on user information. Guide strives to expand user experience while simultaneously maintaining or increasing usability goals such as effectiveness, efficiency, safety, utility, learnability, and memorability.
