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JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Welcome to Assistant
on Air, where we have conversations with people that
build for Google Assistant.
I'm Jessica, and I'll be your host today.
Today we'll be chatting with Steve, who's a Google Developer
Expert for Google Assistant.
Welcome, Steve.
STEVEN GRAY: Hey, Jessica.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: So tell me, Steve,
what do you do on your day job?
STEVEN GRAY: So I am a teacher, basically.
I lecture students at University College London
on various things, and data science,
and various different classes that are computing-based.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's awesome.
So how did you get interested in the voice space?
STEVEN GRAY: It's a really interesting story.
I used to do a lot of research back
in the day at the University of Glasgow
on human-computer interaction.
And we were using different devices, multiple modalities
and experimenting on how we can bring things
together and enhance people's day-to-day interactions
with computers.
And so when the Assistant came along, it was like, wow.
I wish we had this 10 years ago, because this
would have been amazing.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: A lot easier.
STEVEN GRAY: So it's bringing that old research interest back
into my day job.
It's a way for me to get to play with cool toys and cool things.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's awesome.
And I heard that you built a really cool toy
for your students called Scavenger Hunt, right?
STEVEN GRAY: Yes.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Tell me about that.
STEVEN GRAY: So this was based on the idea
we had for new students coming into the university
in our department.
Basically, we'd set up one day where we would put them
in teams of four, and we'd basically go and explore
the city.
And we would have to go and take photos of buildings,
and go to various places around London, and then all come back,
and we'd give them points.
And it was a bonding experience for the students.
And so I had this idea.
I was like, how could we expand on this
and make it more techy and more geeky?
Because we're doing it by hand, and we had all these
checklists.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Oh, no, no.
STEVEN GRAY: Yeah, exactly.
We were thinking about the teacher, and we just, like,
[INAUDIBLE].
So I was like, how can we bring technology into this
to live what we're teaching and [INAUDIBLE]
So we had this idea.
We built this action where it would automate everything,
and we could set the students out and actually--
the idea from that grew from, rather than just
being a one-day event, how do we actually
build a longer experience when necessary?
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Oh, wow.
Oh, that's so cool.
So what's the experience from the student's point of view?
What are they doing?
STEVEN GRAY: They wake up in the morning,
and they talk to the action, and they'll
be given, like, four things they need to find in the day.
So that could be go to a phone box,
or go to the Tower of London, or go and find
some random item in some random locale.
So the action just stops at that point,
and they're sent out into the wider world.
So we have a companion app where they can go and take
a photo of the item, and throughout the day,
they can talk to the Assistant and get clues to see where
are the things, or we can push them
in different directions for when to go different places.
So they take a photo of the item,
and then we use cloud functions to fire that
through Cloud Vision processing, work out what's in the photo.
Is it the right thing they've taken a photo of?
How many points do they get?
Where they've taken the photo.
And then at the end of the day, they
come back, talk to the Assistant,
and it tells them the score for the day
and what they could have done better, what they could
have not done better, and then you play the game the next day.
So you can dip in and dip out as much as you want.
And then at the end of the month,
we calculate the leaderboard for everybody,
so you gamify the whole experience.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's such a great way
to create a really interactive and fun experience for people
who are new to the city, because then you could go explore,
and you're connecting.
And then, of course, there are some people
who are really competitive, so I could see people just wanting
to do it just to win.
STEVEN GRAY: Exactly.
So yeah, you get some really interesting user behavior
out of all this.
Some students were like, oh, I just want to go-- it's for me,
exploring the city.
You can do the whole touristy things,
but it's when you go down different avenues,
and you go and try and explore new things, different things.
But it is funny where some of the students
take it too seriously, and they will actually go out,
and they'll be like, I'm doing this today.
I'm like, maybe you should study your homework a wee bit more.
[LAUGHTER]
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: So it sounds like you
made something too amazing.
STEVEN GRAY: Yeah.
Well, I try.
The really interesting part of this
is, we have to get the experience right.
If you come into the actual experience straightaway,
and it's not great, then you're never
going to come back and use it.
So we've been really working at how to get the interaction
and to get the conversation flowing with Assistant
and the user, in that case being the students,
and really honing that down.
So we've been really using our students
as Guinea pigs in this, and sending them out,
and getting us feedback so we can really
get it tight before we release it to the wider--
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That sounds great.
Do you have any learnings or findings
that you've noticed when it comes
to, especially, the initial, first reaction or interaction
for the user?
STEVEN GRAY: Getting that first part of the conversation
is the thing.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's the most important part.
STEVEN GRAY: Yeah, exactly.
So if they don't know what they're
doing, if they can't get in there quickly
to get the things, then they'll just, like-- oh,
what am I doing?
And then they won't come back.
So it's trying to make it fun and make it engaging for them.
But also, here's an interesting one.
The very first iteration of this action,
we had it just going, OK.
Go and find this, and this, and this, and this.
Bye.
OK.
And the students would come back to me and say,
I can't really remember what were the first two things
I was supposed to go and get.
And we didn't have any callback to basically say--
we had no persistence.
That was an accident by me.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: But that's how we learn.
STEVEN GRAY: Yeah, exactly.
And so they came back, and they would
get four new, random things, and it was like, oh, OK.
So what am I doing now?
So they were confused.
So really learning how to get that interaction properly.
Do you want to know the next thing?
Or just giving them two sound bites, like, go and get
a lemon, or go to the Tower of London.
And then so you got that?
OK.
Here's the next two things.
So it's interesting when you actually
sit down and workshop this.
When actual users come to use it,
they throw so many different variants
of things you would never expect.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: Definitely.
Definitely.
No, that's awesome.
I love the fact that you were able to connect Google
Assistant, and then also their Android app, and then photos,
and machine learn--
there are so many different pieces and moving pieces.
STEVEN GRAY: Yeah, exactly.
And that's what makes the whole thing more fun and challenging,
because you have to make sure that all these bits all
work at the same time to get that really big experience,
because you don't want that point to be like--
the user's waiting for things to happen,
and then they don't have the immediacy of the action
that Assistant actually brings to the game.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: That's so awesome.
Well, thank you, Steve, so much for chatting with us
about this really fun game.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
STEVEN GRAY: Thank you.
JESSICA DENE EARLEY-CHA: So we hope
that you liked today's show, and if you
have any suggestions for future episodes,
feel free to leave them as comments below.
Follow us on Twitter for updates and for new episodes.
I have been Jessica.
Chat with you next time.
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