Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story and today
Speaker 1: I'm here with Cara Price. Hi. So we were talking
Speaker 1: about these episodes of the story, and we realized that
Speaker 1: while the other of us we often have an in
Speaker 1: depth discussion about the guest or the episode, but that
Speaker 1: we weren't capturing that discussion for the podcast and that
Speaker 1: felt like a misopportunity. So today we're trying out something new,
Speaker 1: which is to have a bit of a chat between
Speaker 1: the two of us to intro the guests of the
Speaker 1: week and in particular why we think their story matters
Speaker 1: to us and to our listeners. So to start of
Speaker 1: this week, I wanted to share a thought from our guest,
Speaker 1: David Webster about the importance of always considering the user
Speaker 1: when developing new technology.
Speaker 2: And it's often a blind spot for the technologists. I mean,
Speaker 2: the technologists are not necessarily cold or dispersonal or or cynical.
Speaker 2: The probably parents of this new technology, but they might
Speaker 2: not realize that their babies their babies ugly.
Speaker 1: So, Cara, that was David Webster speaking. He's head of
Speaker 1: ux or User Experience, that's something called Google Labs, and
Speaker 1: in my opinion, he has one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: jobs at Google, because Labs is the division that's responsible
Speaker 1: for making consumer facing products that sit on top of
Speaker 1: Google's AI models. They've done stuff in the world of
Speaker 1: video generation, but probably their most famous product is Notebook LM.
Speaker 3: And that's the product that we thought was going to
Speaker 3: put us out of business one, the one where you
Speaker 3: can feed any websites, document articles you like, and get
Speaker 3: back a two way podcast.
Speaker 1: Two comforting voices, giggling over whatever the topic at hand
Speaker 1: may be. Much like that exactly. This notebook and AM
Speaker 1: product kind of grew people's minds and it had fans
Speaker 1: from Mark Cuban to AI pioneer Andre Pathy his Mark Cuban, has.
Speaker 2: Anybody played with Notebook l LAMB the podcast feature Oh
Speaker 2: my God.
Speaker 3: So you could take any PDF file, any text.
Speaker 2: It could be like your onboarding manual.
Speaker 3: They could be training manual, they could be distribution manuals,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, and you feed.
Speaker 2: It in there and it turns it into a podcast.
Speaker 1: Cuban is very fixtational manuals for whatever reason he is.
Speaker 3: But what does Webster's role have to do with any
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 1: Well, David Webster, as I mentioned, runs Google Labs. Previously,
Speaker 1: he worked for this design firm called Ideo, which is
Speaker 1: famous for the concept of human centered design, in other words,
Speaker 1: doing deep user research to understand what real people want
Speaker 1: from our product and then integrating that feedback into the product.
Speaker 1: Idea is actually the firm who designed the first mouse
Speaker 1: for Apple in the way back when, and Webster has
Speaker 1: now been tasked with making delightful, engaging a eye products
Speaker 1: for Google. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, it's an interesting moment for this conversation because
Speaker 3: Google is getting absolutely beaten up, relatively speaking, by the
Speaker 3: stock market because of questions about whether the ad supported
Speaker 3: search engine, which is fundamental to its business, will survive
Speaker 3: the age of AI exactly.
Speaker 1: And David is on the front lines of building the
Speaker 1: next wave of consumer products for Google. We spoke about
Speaker 1: the philosophy behind how he does that and about his
Speaker 1: views on the future of wearable AI. Here's the conversation.
Speaker 1: David Webster, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4: Today, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: You know, when people think about Google, they obviously think
Speaker 1: about the search engine. In fact, you know, to Google
Speaker 1: became a verb much like to hoover, where we come from,
Speaker 1: became a verb for vacuum cleaning in Britain. You work
Speaker 1: at Google Labs as the head of UX, Well, what
Speaker 1: does labs do and how does it interact with a
Speaker 1: larger Google organization.
Speaker 2: Well, Labs is a group that we started in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. It is actually our reboot of a group
Speaker 2: that was around her in the early days of Google,
Speaker 2: which was a place where we could experiment with emergent
Speaker 2: capabilities and new technologies coming from the research side of
Speaker 2: the organization and figure out how to quickly productize those
Speaker 2: in new ways and service of Google's missions. So that's
Speaker 2: why we brought labs back into existence.
Speaker 1: Google's mission being is that still to organize the world's information.
Speaker 2: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Speaker 2: I joined to stand up the UX component of labs,
Speaker 2: and the exciting thing for me was having had a
Speaker 2: career in design and UX UX standing of course for
Speaker 2: user experiences. I was very aware that we were in
Speaker 2: a moment where there was a host actually of unprecedentedly
Speaker 2: powerful technologies their time had arrived, and was very conscious
Speaker 2: of the significance of user experience and inflecting those technologies
Speaker 2: so that the prosu weigh the cons. There were a
Speaker 2: bunch of things emerging around twenty twenty two that were contenders.
Speaker 2: You know, the blockchain was still a thing. Metaverses were
Speaker 2: still a thing, but obviously llms their moment was arriving,
Speaker 2: and very quickly we ascertained that they were becoming the
Speaker 2: thing and started putting all our efforts into figuring out
Speaker 2: how to take the potential of this, you know, significant
Speaker 2: platform shift and format it so that it was accessible
Speaker 2: and useful to people.
Speaker 1: You just want to sort of go back in time
Speaker 1: thirty odd years to kind of give some framing to
Speaker 1: this conversation into your background. I'm wonders you can tell
Speaker 1: us who Kenji Eko one, if I'm saying that correctly,
Speaker 1: who he is, and what we can't understand about your
Speaker 1: work without understanding him.
Speaker 2: Kenji Ekuan. Kenji Ekuan was absolutely legendary and iconic a
Speaker 2: Japanese designer. He was the founder of a company called
Speaker 2: GK Design, which is a large Japanese group of design
Speaker 2: and creative companies, and in.
Speaker 4: The early days of my career.
Speaker 2: Had the privilege of getting to meet him quite serendipetitively.
Speaker 2: I studied mechanical engineering originally, then studied industrial design at
Speaker 2: the Royal College of Art. Wanted to be both a
Speaker 2: deeply technical person and a highly creative person. You had
Speaker 2: to kind of pick either or in the UK at
Speaker 2: the time, so I was attracted to and moved to
Speaker 2: a place where where you didn't have to pick either or,
Speaker 2: and one of those places was Japan. And so I
Speaker 2: rolled up in Japan, but I didn't have a job
Speaker 2: lined up, and via a friend of mine who was
Speaker 2: already in Japan, I got an introduction to Kenji Ekuan,
Speaker 2: who was this revered chairman of the most iconic design
Speaker 2: firm in Japan. If you have ever used soy sauce
Speaker 2: of one of those Kickoman soy sauce bottles, beautifully kind
Speaker 2: of organically shaped one with the red lead, that's one
Speaker 2: of Ekuan's designs.
Speaker 1: One of the most ubiquitous and iconic consumers there.
Speaker 2: Is, absolutely and I found myself able to go and
Speaker 2: meet the great man. I went into his office. I
Speaker 2: was looking around me and it was this thing in
Speaker 2: the corner that I couldn't help noticing, which was a
Speaker 2: life size fiberglass human body kind of suspended in space
Speaker 2: horror onto. He was two axles going through the shoulders
Speaker 2: and the ankles, and big kind of chrome wagon wheels
Speaker 2: on the axles. After we'd done with this sort of
Speaker 2: introductory niceties.
Speaker 4: I said, I couldn't help noticing that thing. What is that?
Speaker 2: He just looked me in the eye and said, this
Speaker 2: is my soul chariot and pressed the switch and the
Speaker 2: acxules started rotating, and I was awestruck. I thought, this
Speaker 2: guy's amazing. This is not your typical Christy senior executive.
Speaker 2: He's talking about his soul chariot. And then we got
Speaker 2: talking about what my aspirations were, and he looked at
Speaker 2: some of my portfolio work from college and he said,
Speaker 2: I want you to design motorcycles. And through that experience,
Speaker 2: as I worked in his design firm design motorcycles, I
Speaker 2: read a lot about him and learned his philosophy and
Speaker 2: obviously had some exposure to him. And he has this
Speaker 2: way of talking about the central endeavor of design, and
Speaker 2: he calls it human machine soul energy.
Speaker 1: That is the game, Human machine soul energy.
Speaker 2: That is a game, and that has stuped with me
Speaker 2: ever since. So my career has been about the pursuit
Speaker 2: of human machine soul energy still is.
Speaker 1: That's a remarkable way of putting it, and especially at
Speaker 1: a time when I mean there's all these questions about
Speaker 1: Emerson consciousness. There's people who are falling in love with
Speaker 1: their ms, treating large language models as spiritual guides. I mean,
Speaker 1: this quality of the soul when it comes to technology
Speaker 1: is something something which for me is a kind of
Speaker 1: fascinating part at the reach of my understanding of what's
Speaker 1: going on silicon value right now. But I haven't had
Speaker 1: a chance to ask somebody really what they mean by
Speaker 1: it and what they think about it. So I have
Speaker 1: to ask you right now. I mean, how how does
Speaker 1: that phrase become newly relevant given everything we're living through
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: Well, it's newly relevant every time I visit, but it's
Speaker 2: particularly relevant right now because all of a sudden, really quickly,
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of experiences and capabilities that we're securely
Speaker 2: on the human side of the human machine equation, and
Speaker 2: now those are able to happen on the technology side.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Famously, there's a lot of anthrop of myomorphization of what.
Speaker 4: The lllms can do.
Speaker 2: People use all this language that was previously used for
Speaker 2: humans to describe how ILM's work. You know, they say
Speaker 2: it's thinking, and you know, the seashore between human and
Speaker 2: machine has changed rather radically, rather suddenly, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of figuring out that has to happen to ensure
Speaker 2: that that change nets out positively for humans.
Speaker 1: Of what you're working on, and I want to ask
Speaker 1: you not just what the framing of the problem is,
Speaker 1: but what some of the initial answers are before we
Speaker 1: get there. Though, You finish up in Japan and in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven you Silicon Valley, I believe, which is
Speaker 1: the same year that Steve Jobs returns to Apple, and
Speaker 1: you take a job at a firm called IDEO, which,
Speaker 1: for those who don't know, I think, is kind of
Speaker 1: a household name in this design thinking world. It was
Speaker 1: also the company that worked with Apple I think in
Speaker 1: the eighties to design Apple's first computer mouse. From nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven to today, working at IDEO until twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: you witness first hand revolution after revolution in terms of
Speaker 1: the way humans interact with technology. Where do you place
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two and the consumerization of generative AI in
Speaker 1: that journey.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because on the one hand, there's one way
Speaker 2: of character, which is it's just another cycle, right, which is, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a technology unlock. There's a bunch of investment that happens,
Speaker 2: and a bunch of hype that happens, and kind of
Speaker 2: Darwinistic explosion of invention of new value that happens. All
Speaker 2: of that is true, And so at some level it
Speaker 2: feels like Web two point or or feels like the
Speaker 2: dotcom moment. But to me it feels very different in
Speaker 2: terms of how pervasive this technology is already and definitely
Speaker 2: will be. But I think the fundamental character of the
Speaker 2: technology makes its potential even more significant. And then for me,
Speaker 2: the attraction to IDEO was a continuation of that through line.
Speaker 2: You know, engineer who went to art school went to
Speaker 2: Japan to be both technologists and create to and then
Speaker 2: Ideal famously resolved any dichotomy there. And so IDEO's cultures
Speaker 2: point of view philosophically is that it's an absolutely user
Speaker 2: centered and just some very motivated to bring that you know,
Speaker 2: solving for the users as a kind of fundamental approach
Speaker 2: to this extremely significant technology moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and going back to the mission of Google Labs
Speaker 1: that I read at the beginning, Google Labs is where you,
Speaker 1: I guess you means the user in this case can
Speaker 1: discover and try Google's latest AI experimental products and help
Speaker 1: shape the future of AI technology. A very interesting in
Speaker 1: second half of that sentence, especially because it's someone at
Speaker 1: odds with how people think about the development of AI.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The general model is, here's a bunch of computer scientists
Speaker 1: who are not particularly interested in humans or even humanity
Speaker 1: more broadly, and are willing to write it off in
Speaker 1: favor of a you know, silicon superintelligence. But here you
Speaker 1: are promising us as a role in the development of
Speaker 1: the technology.
Speaker 4: How do you do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is absolutely the case, certainly something that I
Speaker 2: bring from Ideal in certainly in my experience of the
Speaker 2: engineering culture at Google, I don't think it is in
Speaker 2: denial about the user. But what you do is you
Speaker 2: you know, in the approach that Ideal famously used across
Speaker 2: all of these waves of technology, it's to characterize successful
Speaker 2: and innovation as being in the sort of sweet spot
Speaker 2: between feeability, desirability, and viability. Meaning there's a three circle
Speaker 2: diagram which is technology, human and business, and a successful
Speaker 2: innovation has to be like the middle of that three
Speaker 2: circle diagram. It has to matter to humans and be
Speaker 2: desirable to them for some reason, and it doesn't get
Speaker 2: to exist unless there's a business model that supports it,
Speaker 2: and often the conditions around a new technology moment, a
Speaker 2: new platform moment can lead to getting to that middle
Speaker 2: of the ven diagram territory from the technology circle. So
Speaker 2: a technology push that can often feel like an answer
Speaker 2: looking for a question.
Speaker 4: It's like, we've.
Speaker 2: Invented this new capability, let's figure out how to make
Speaker 2: people want it.
Speaker 1: With all due respect to Mark Zuckerberg, this is the
Speaker 1: if people are lonely, might not give them fifteen AI
Speaker 1: friends school of thought. I don't want reach out town
Speaker 1: so we can right.
Speaker 2: And it's often a blind spot for the technologists. I mean,
Speaker 2: the technologists are not necessarily cold or dispersonal or cynical,
Speaker 2: the proud parents of this new technology, but they might
Speaker 2: not realize that their babies, their babies ugly, you know.
Speaker 4: And what Ideal.
Speaker 2: Strongly believes, what I believe and what we practice in
Speaker 2: labs is that you have to, at the very least
Speaker 2: also fold in the human at the earliest stage. You
Speaker 2: have to and preferably drive it from from the user.
Speaker 2: You have to go out there and get curious about
Speaker 2: what matters to people on their terms and use that
Speaker 2: use what you learn there as the jumping off point.
Speaker 2: For generating new ideas about value that you can deliver
Speaker 2: within new technology. When you go about it that way,
Speaker 2: you're far more lightly to create experiences that users love.
Speaker 2: You're more likely to create the kind of value that
Speaker 2: you can defend over time as a company because you're
Speaker 2: in a you're in an emotional relationship with your users,
Speaker 2: and it generally works out a lot better. The thing
Speaker 2: that it's often in tension with is speed, because when
Speaker 2: a new technology appears, time is of the essence, and
Speaker 2: that's very real, and so you have to achieve both.
Speaker 1: Had when we come back the double edged sword of
Speaker 1: technology and what happens when you innovate too quickly stay
Speaker 1: with us. So I mean, let's anchor this in the
Speaker 1: tangible world of products that you have incubated and launched
Speaker 1: within labs.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: So, Google's develop a conference was in May of this year.
Speaker 1: I think there were four labs launches that were announced,
Speaker 1: maybe a five. I'm not show but correctly if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But take one of them and explain how it reflects
Speaker 1: the process you've just described.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's take one from one of our recently
Speaker 2: shared ones. Flow so flows the surface that lets people
Speaker 2: interact with the capabilities of the generative video model VO three.
Speaker 2: VO is the name of the latest video generation model
Speaker 2: Google has, So you know, you can convey your intention
Speaker 2: to this model and it will generate incredible, undiscernible from
Speaker 2: reality videos. So VO is the model, Flow is the product.
Speaker 2: Flow is the means of conveying that intention to the model.
Speaker 2: As a filmmaker, so you communicate what you want the
Speaker 2: scene to be, you communicate camera instructions, you communicate edits
Speaker 2: to it, and Flow as a lab's product. Just as
Speaker 2: an example of how that comes about. You know, from
Speaker 2: the beginning of Flow, we worked very closely collaboratively with
Speaker 2: movie makers. One of our fundamental principles and labs is
Speaker 2: co create. Find out the people that you're interested in
Speaker 2: making something for and set things up so that you
Speaker 2: can actually work with them, and you're in a very
Speaker 2: very close feedback loop about how well you're doing in
Speaker 2: terms of delivering the kind of experience the matter to them.
Speaker 2: So we worked with a bunch of filmmakers and developing Flow,
Speaker 2: and it's really interesting you mentioned Notebook LM earlier, there's
Speaker 2: another kind of co creation there. We worked with Stephen Johnson,
Speaker 2: who's a best selling writer who had been obsessed for years,
Speaker 2: for like a decade with this idea of tools for
Speaker 2: thought and ways of collecting and formatting all of the
Speaker 2: stuff that he you he's when writing a novel, both
Speaker 2: his own previous writing has notes, his references, and figuring
Speaker 2: out how to make it most useful.
Speaker 4: So he had He was like the.
Speaker 2: Their original super user of notebook LM before notebook LM existed.
Speaker 2: So we hired him and brought them onto the team
Speaker 2: and co created the product with him and a lot
Speaker 2: of the core DNA of notebook LM is what it
Speaker 2: is because of Stephen.
Speaker 1: What's cool about notebook and LM is rather than just
Speaker 1: saying to it, you know Gemini, Let's say I'm interested
Speaker 1: in the history of the Nutcracker, and you know ballet,
Speaker 1: you can say notebook LM. Here's you know, a great
Speaker 1: New Yorker piece about the Nutcracker, a review of a
Speaker 1: contemporary production at the Brooklyn Clagory of Music. And here
Speaker 1: is you know, a long document about the history of dance.
Speaker 1: I don't want to look at anything else, just these
Speaker 1: three documents and then provide you with insights and so
Speaker 1: in a sense, it puts you in the driver's seat
Speaker 1: in terms of it's more like having a research assistant
Speaker 1: than just sending out a query and seeing what happens.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: But then the kind of additional layer was and you
Speaker 1: can hear it as a two way podcast, and that
Speaker 1: final thing seemed to be what blue people's minds most
Speaker 1: of all.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't entirely surprised that the blue people's
Speaker 2: minds because we had been having our minds going by
Speaker 2: internally before we launched it, and we knew that this
Speaker 2: is gold. You know, this is amazing as in terms
Speaker 2: of like delivering on the make the world's information accessible
Speaker 2: and useful. This directly served that in a super fresh way.
Speaker 2: That was super delightful. You know, a big part of
Speaker 2: user experience designs. Don't over index on yourself as the user,
Speaker 2: but as a user of notebook LM, the magic has
Speaker 2: and more and not. One of the early comments and
Speaker 2: our discard feed from actual users about it, well, somebody said,
Speaker 2: it makes boring stuff interesting and I use it all
Speaker 2: day every day to do that.
Speaker 1: I love it to play Devil's advocate for a moment.
Speaker 1: Some people say, well, you know, in the age of
Speaker 1: l l m's and jernity of AI. Anything that sits
Speaker 1: on top of a model is just a rapper. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so labs in the wrapper business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like who isn't in the in the wrap?
Speaker 2: It's like, I guess I don't really agree with the frame.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 4: Is every car brand a rapper and internal combustion? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But to be a bit more substantive about this, right,
Speaker 1: why do I need flow? Why can't I just tell
Speaker 1: the three really in natural language what I want to achieve?
Speaker 1: Like why is a filmmaker? Do I need like a
Speaker 1: product layer beyond natural language processing between me and a
Speaker 1: video generation model?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you're talking to UX person.
Speaker 2: I think it's all about that layer. It's all about
Speaker 2: the application layer. It's all about the qualities of the
Speaker 2: interaction experience with the underlying technology. I think we've been
Speaker 2: in the sort of a command line era for AI
Speaker 2: thus far, where it's all about kind of the user
Speaker 2: learning this arcane language of prompts and contorting what they
Speaker 2: want to make happen into that language to feed it
Speaker 2: to the model. That doesn't bring me joy as a user.
Speaker 2: I think it doesn't have to be that way. You know,
Speaker 2: we can figure out delightful interactions for the user to
Speaker 2: convery their intent to the model and for them to
Speaker 2: work with the model. And I think it's all about that.
Speaker 2: If you look at at how value is built and
Speaker 2: defended by the world's most successful companies, certainly in the
Speaker 2: consumer sector, it's about UX ya your UX. What are
Speaker 2: the qualities of that experience and that's what builds a
Speaker 2: character in the brand of a company.
Speaker 1: You mentioned business models yourself, right, Like where does a
Speaker 1: flow or notebook m LM? Like how much is it
Speaker 1: your job to monetize these new products that you're creating.
Speaker 4: Certainly not my job to monetize them. You know.
Speaker 2: The way tech companies in general are configured is you've
Speaker 2: got engineering as a discipline. You've got uxit's a discipline.
Speaker 2: You've got product management is a discipline, and the product
Speaker 2: managers or the or the CEOs essentially of the endeavor
Speaker 2: typically and it's their job to take an innovation on
Speaker 2: the trajectory from glimpse of value to users to successful product,
Speaker 2: including monetization strategy, usually through phases. And so when you're
Speaker 2: doing early stage, it's less about are you hitting a
Speaker 2: weekly active user target and it's more about are you
Speaker 2: seeing fire in the eyes of the users that you're
Speaker 2: putting in front of them, And certainly for me, my
Speaker 2: currency is more of the latter than the former.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm all about helping.
Speaker 2: To create experiences that create that kind of response from
Speaker 2: that induce that kind of response in users, and then
Speaker 2: you know, pms then have something to play with to
Speaker 2: take on the journey towards like successful products, including monetization.
Speaker 1: So that moment for you when the Internet and Mark
Speaker 1: Cuban and Capathy and regular people on Reddit are going
Speaker 1: crazy for note notebook a M, that's a moment that
Speaker 1: that is the magic in the bottle that you spend
Speaker 1: every day in such of essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean certainly in terms of outcome, the other
Speaker 2: magic in the bottle, like the thing that really motivates
Speaker 2: me at least as much of that is that there's
Speaker 2: something about just the sort of thrill of the chase,
Speaker 2: this idea of kind of before launch, when you've got
Speaker 2: like a team, there's this sort of mutual creative euphoric
Speaker 2: state you get into when you're you're pushing hard because
Speaker 2: you know there's something that you can bring into existence
Speaker 2: and if you set things up right with the team.
Speaker 2: They're all kind of egging each other on. They're causing
Speaker 2: each other to be at their creative best. And then
Speaker 2: when it results in an outcome that is obviously striking
Speaker 2: a card with users and hopefully making a difference in
Speaker 2: the world, then that's that's greedy.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the products that you guys are announced that
Speaker 1: the Developer Conference I'd love to spend just a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes on is Project Mariner. I mean hosting a
Speaker 1: podcast called tech Stuff. We're constantly hearing about agents and
Speaker 1: urgentic AI. So even I don't fully know what that means.
Speaker 1: I think it means ais that go out in the
Speaker 1: world and are able to take action on your behalf
Speaker 1: in different fields. So I might say, like, not just hey,
Speaker 1: Gemini would be a great itinerary for ten days in
Speaker 1: Italy if I want to avoid the crowds in August,
Speaker 1: but hey, Agent, I want to go to Italy for
Speaker 1: ten days in August. Here's my budget. Please come back
Speaker 1: with a fully you know, executed trip, because is that
Speaker 1: a fair summary? And then what does Project Mariner do?
Speaker 2: I think that's that's a you're framing as a first
Speaker 2: summary of you know, the idea of what an agent
Speaker 2: is product Mariners an early experiment and achieving that. So
Speaker 2: let's create what you just described, which is an agent
Speaker 2: that can understand your intention and go and take action
Speaker 2: in service of that and primarily via browser based activities.
Speaker 1: And what does that mean, like if I if I
Speaker 1: use marin it, like, what will my experience be? And
Speaker 1: your user research? How long do you think you'll take
Speaker 1: the average user to be comfortable with aim making purchase
Speaker 1: decisions on spending their money.
Speaker 2: Essentially, Well, one of the things that it doesn't do
Speaker 2: so far is make the purchases for you, right, it's
Speaker 2: not at that point yet, but it will go through
Speaker 2: a reasonable set of research and choice characterization and recommendation
Speaker 2: steps that would Amuel what you would do the purchase
Speaker 2: decision was still in ad theser. So so that's exactly
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that it does. But it's not
Speaker 2: just for purchasing. It can be for research tasks. You know,
Speaker 2: go figure out all there is and all about this
Speaker 2: thing that I'm interested in, do some reasoning associated with that,
Speaker 2: and come back with a set of conclusions or recommendations
Speaker 2: that helped me. And so it's those sort of things.
Speaker 2: You can point it out at tasks and it can
Speaker 2: go and you know, pursue those tasks on your behalf.
Speaker 1: David had to ask you because you know, you had
Speaker 1: this amazing experience of going to Japan as a young man,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting one of your idols and then going
Speaker 1: out and being assigned the task of you know, design
Speaker 1: for motorcycles. Right, part of what you had to do
Speaker 1: in that process, I assume was study other motorcycles, meet
Speaker 1: motorcycle riders, essentially develop the playbook that you refined at
Speaker 1: IDEO and then are executing on now at Google Labs.
Speaker 1: Do you worry about a future in which the products
Speaker 1: like Mariner, the agentic products get so good that there
Speaker 1: is no incentive for humans to go into the world
Speaker 1: and develop their own skills and vision by grinding through
Speaker 1: tasks that could be automated. But that it was to
Speaker 1: our benefit that they were not automated, because it allowed
Speaker 1: us to become the people and thinkers and doers that
Speaker 1: we are today. I mean, how do you how do
Speaker 1: you grapple with that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Acknowledge it as a reasonable question. I personally, I don't
Speaker 2: worry too much about it because It's funny, I you
Speaker 2: know career working in design, it's often to those who
Speaker 2: aren't in it, it can seem like the answer to
Speaker 2: good design is remove friction, right, and hey, if you
Speaker 2: just if you just remove friction, then it's a great
Speaker 2: design solution. I think there's a little bit more to
Speaker 2: it than that, you know. To answer your question about
Speaker 2: my career and all of the struggle and toil the
Speaker 2: resulted then hard lessons learned? Do I think those same
Speaker 2: lessons would have been learned with some help with that toil,
Speaker 2: I think they probably would. I think there's probably a
Speaker 2: sweet spot. Humans are all different, but I think most
Speaker 2: humans are at their best when there's a little bit
Speaker 2: of striving going on, when there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: delightful struggle going on, that tends to bring out the
Speaker 2: best in us.
Speaker 4: And I think.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's not a about eliminating the possibility of that.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's about being more able to be more targeted
Speaker 2: with that in service of one's growth.
Speaker 1: On the subject of designing user experiences, do you have
Speaker 1: a dream product in the back of your mind.
Speaker 2: Rather than a specific dream product. There's a dream category
Speaker 2: that I'm excited about personally and is this category of
Speaker 2: physical AI. I you know, what are the set of
Speaker 2: opportunities for beautiful new user experiences beyond looking at pixels
Speaker 2: and leggling our fingers.
Speaker 4: And I very much look forward to that.
Speaker 2: If I look at the experiences I enjoy, if I
Speaker 2: look at the weekend I just had, I would say
Speaker 2: that in my top five experiences, we're all physical in nature,
Speaker 2: that we're all about me up and about moving my
Speaker 2: body in the world. I am really excited about new
Speaker 2: presentation of this technology that enhances my physical experience, and
Speaker 2: I think that is coming.
Speaker 1: You gave a Ted talk a few years ago in Glasgow,
Speaker 1: I think, and one of your warnings was about how tech,
Speaker 1: in its eagerness to scale, could sometimes sprint in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction without kind of pausing to assess. You gave
Speaker 1: that Ted talk before you worked at one of the
Speaker 1: world's largest and most powerful tech companies. But I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you apply that thinking and that
Speaker 1: lesson that you developed on the outside now that you're
Speaker 1: on the inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I still very much believe in that.
Speaker 2: I interestingly was, you know, not inside one of the
Speaker 2: largest and most powerful tech companies, but I was consulting
Speaker 2: with many of them that the time. So I did
Speaker 2: have a front, real seat into that dynamic. You know,
Speaker 2: so when a platform shifts the cars in a very
Speaker 2: real way, that history shows time is of the essence.
Speaker 2: It matters to ship fast, and that can have unintended
Speaker 2: consequences if if it's at the expense of curiosity users
Speaker 2: curiosity about consequences. I mean, you know, I guess the
Speaker 2: fact that I am in this company doing what I
Speaker 2: do is is evidence of user curiosity, right, I mean
Speaker 2: my answer to your question is what do you do
Speaker 2: about it? Do you worry about it? Well, I don't
Speaker 2: worry about it. If you're folding in like strong professional
Speaker 2: UX practice from the get go, you know, as you
Speaker 2: as you frame your pursuits and you build that into
Speaker 2: the process of bringing the new thing into the world.
Speaker 4: That's that's actually.
Speaker 2: Kind of the job of UX in the mix is
Speaker 2: to find out what matters to people and ensure that
Speaker 2: that is factored into the path forward for bringing the
Speaker 2: product into existence.
Speaker 1: Just to close, I'd love you to reflect on that
Speaker 1: word curiosity. What's your personal philosophy on curiosity?
Speaker 2: My personal philosophy on curiosity, Well, in the context of AI.
Speaker 2: You know, AI has continued to provide all of these
Speaker 2: new affordancies for productivity and efficiency. So I think it
Speaker 2: would be a terrible shame if all we did was
Speaker 2: to turn efficiency and productivity up to living with this technology,
Speaker 2: that would be that would be doing the technology a disservice.
Speaker 2: I think what we need to do is to use
Speaker 2: the fact that we can get more done more efficiently
Speaker 2: to afford the ability to broaden our gaze and look
Speaker 2: for new opportunities.
Speaker 1: Is that what you mean by help technology be good?
Speaker 1: Which is a phrase from your tech talk.
Speaker 4: It definitely.
Speaker 2: Serves that aspiration. Every technology obviously is a double edged sword.
Speaker 2: You know, you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And I believe that design in particular
Speaker 2: plays a role in the mix that allows it to
Speaker 2: inflect how that technology plays out in constructive ways. And
Speaker 2: so I think that is certainly sort of a central
Speaker 2: endeavor of the designer. I think it's if I go
Speaker 2: back to the very beginning and talk about human machine
Speaker 2: and soul energy, I think it's about finding virtuous ways
Speaker 2: to express that relationship.
Speaker 1: Their webs. To thank you so UCAL during US and
Speaker 1: tech stuff today.
Speaker 4: That was fun. Nice to speak to you.
Speaker 1: The tech Stuff. I'm os Vloshin. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Toapia. It was executive produced
Speaker 1: by Me, Karen Price, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Speaker 1: Katrina nor velve Heart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode
Speaker 1: and Kyle Murdoch rod oar theme song. Join us on
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