Smart home devices such as Amazon Alexa, Echo, and Google Home have changed the way we live in a very short time. With competitors like Apple and Microsoft expected to join the fray, Google is taking steps to set themselves apart by improving the Google Home user experience. According to Business Insider, Google hired Liron Damir as head of UX for Google Home to improve the device’s user experience, and for good reason:
“Consumers want their smart home experience to be seamless and convenient. One-third of global consumers say they purchased their smart home devices for the convenience they provide, while devices working the way they should and working together seamlessly were the two largest points of satisfaction for smart home users, according to a recent Support.com survey.”
Google Home is a small, candle-shaped device that responds to a variety of voice commands and does just about everything. It can play music, control the lights, set timers, get answers to questions, and even stream your favorite show on a connected TV. According to The Verge, Damir’s prime objective is to enable Google Home to do something that it cannot yet do, “build out more visual usual experiences.” The ability for users to interact with Google Home on a visual level will improve the convenience and user experience of the product at an unparalleled level.
The very existence of Google Home and related devices relies on superior user experience. If the purpose of a device is to make your life more convenient is too inconvenient to use, it isn’t a very good device. Google Home’s goal is to marry the internet of things (IoT) with intuitive user experience to create the ultimate smart device. The result is what we like to call the Internet of Experiences:
“While participants in the IoT tend to focus on “things” – the individual smart devices connected to a network – the Internet of Experiences aims higher, concentrating on what becomes possible when smart devices piggyback off one another’s capabilities to create experiences: innovative services that simplify and enhance daily life in ways never possible before. Enabling a tree, for example, to report, “I’m being attacked by caterpillars,” which prompts a computer to dispatch a drone equipped to treat the situation. Or a highway to report, “I’ve reached my carrying capacity,” which prompts the rerouting of automobiles onto alternate routes.”
Harnessing the power of the Internet of Experiences through improved user experience could push Google Home onto the cutting-edge of a relatively unexplored arena of data collection and analysis. An advanced IoT platform in the home could help researchers or architects design more efficient houses to reduce their carbon foot prints. City planners could use the data to analyze energy consumption by neighborhood. Those are only a few of the possible uses for Google Home and the Internet of Experiences, and it’s admittedly hard to imagine the possibilities because there are just so many.
The improved convenience of Google Home enables an Internet of Experiences to realize its potential. If Google Home is easier to use, more people will use it for more tasks. The more tasks it undertakes, the more data and experiences it gathers. Researchers can use this data to establish patterns to create solutions for some of the most pressing problems in modern America.
