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RONY PATEL: My name is Rony.
I'm a quantitative UX researcher working on digital well-being.
So to start us off, this is what our day looks like.
Just for argument's sake, let's pretend we only
have three parts of our day--
while we're sleeping, while we're at work,
and while we're at home.
And we also have many tasks that we
do within these specific parts.
So you can imagine you wake up thinking about work.
You write an email that somehow takes all day, which
is something I do quite often.
And you might accidentally ignore your child
while you're on your phone, which is also unfortunately
very common.
So this might work for some people.
It's probably not working for the bulk of the people.
Now, there's a couple of things here
that's probably going wrong.
One, there's a lot of overlap between
not only the context, but the task we're
doing within the context.
You can imagine multitasking sounds really
great in some ways and people really feel great about it,
but it's actually not too great for productivity.
There's a lot of research that's already done on this topic.
And it's also very, very stressful.
Having to go through this day is not great.
Waking up to thinking about work for the first thing
is probably not a fantastic experience.
Now, there's something on the way opposite side of things.
And this might not be an optimal situation either.
So you have someone who's very, very focused.
They're like, when I'm doing this thing,
I'm doing this thing.
So you can imagine they're only sleeping when they're sleeping.
They get to work, and they're doing their four
tasks, one at a time nicely.
They get home.
They have four things to do at home.
They're also doing those things really nicely.
My guess is this is probably not going to work for most people
either, but maybe we can start shifting in that direction
to help people find balance.
So what we advocate for Google is finding a balance
with technology that works that feels right for you.
So there's two pieces here I want to highlight.
The first piece is finding a balance with technology.
And on the developer side, we think about understanding
context when we build.
So what kind of thing are you building?
How does this fit into a user's day, week, life generally?
So for example, if you're building an enterprise app,
how does it fit into their specific day,
and can we create some sort of boundaries
to help keep it within that time frame?
And that second piece is that feels right for you.
So there's a user component there.
How can users individualize that experience
so it works with their specific lives?
And from a business perspective, we
think about sustainable growth.
It's kind of like technical debt.
If you're only optimizing for the short term,
it's only going to last for the short term.
So try to find ways to work in the long term.
So when opportunities are possible,
think about how to expand your metric ecosystem.
We sometimes think about metrics like revenue, subscriptions,
engagement, whatever it might be,
but try to find other metrics that can help bring in value.
Most companies and apps have mission statements or value
propositions.
Are there ways to quantify that and build in those metrics?
Understand what levers are moving those metrics
up and down.
And the last thing I want to leave you with
is Experiments with Google.
Experiments with Google is a platform
where designers and developers can kind of come together
to showcase ideas.
So we actually had a launch just yesterday.
And Experiments with Google basically
provides an opportunity for developers
to share some code, open source or not.
It's kind of up to them.
And they can play around with it.
So our launch that we had is a couple
of digital well-being apps that literally launched yesterday.
Feel free to check out the press.
We're also doing a sandbox upstairs,
so I'm just going to do a quick plug.
Please come upstairs and check these out.
So these can serve a couple of functions.
One, from a user perspective, you can download them,
you can play them out.
They are meant to be experiments,
so try them out for a day, try them out for a week.
If they're working for you, keep them on forever.
>From a developer perspective, it's a great way just
to get some more knowledge on what the topic is
and how it might apply to your specific app.
So starting with the first one, it's called Desert Island.
And it's kind of if you were stuck
on a desert for a day, what are those five or so apps that you
might think about holding onto?
And again, try it out for a day, a week.
See what happens.
The next one is the Post Box.
And it's kind of a notification experience.
So when we get the post through the mail,
we used to get it once a day at home.
And how can we kind of replicate that experience?
It's very specifically bounded into technology.
So we can actually have a situation
where users are opting in and figuring out
a time that the notification really works for them.
And the nice thing is unlike the post or mail,
we can actually add a technology layer on top of it.
We can help categorize people's notifications,
and so they can understand what kinds of things
they're getting.
Next one is We Flip.
This is more of a social interaction.
I think a common use case I think about
for this is when you're at a restaurant or dinner
or something like that, it's a way
to enter a social contract to be away from your phones
during that time.
The next one, Morph, is perhaps my favorite.
It's the way technology is designed right now,
it's everything all the time.
That's kind of the model that it has.
And can we shift that model to what you need when you need it?
So what Morph allows you to do is create different modes
for your life.
So for example, I can create a work mode and say,
these are the specific work apps I want at that point in time.
And so when I'm in this building right here,
please show me only my work apps.
Now, I can still see everything else,
but it's kind of giving you what you
need when you need it, as opposed to everything
all the time.
And the last one is technically maybe the simplest one to do,
but it's the most interesting in some ways.
It's the Unlock Clock.
It's a wallpaper that shows you how many times you're
unlocking your phone.
And each time you open it up, it kind
of increments to the next one.
I believe someone on the team hit 200.
And it was not a competition.
It's just what happens in a given day.
And so I'm going to leave you with the last three tidbits.
So first is context.
So how does your app fit into people's day, or week,
or lives?
And how can you provide some sort of awareness and control
over this experience?
Second, from a business perspective,
think about sustainability.
How can you measure quality signals in addition
to the quantity signals that you're measuring right now?
And finally, experiments.
So play around with our tools, build knowledge,
study your own users so you can understand what's going on.
And again, we do have a sandbox upstairs.
Please come by.
We have Hack Packs, which are basically
a way to get started to understand
common digital well-being habits and how your app might be
able to adapt to those things.
We also have buttons, so it's very exciting.
Thank you so much.
So here's the website over here.
It's g.co/digitalwell beingexperiments.
You can also search Experiments with Google,
and it should be the first or so link up there.
And it will lead you to the digital well-being
website for these experiments.
Now, the experiments have two things.
One, it's a place where you can actually
download the apps onto your Play Store,
so you can play around with them,
but we also have the source code available there,
so you can actually see how we're
doing some of these things, and maybe you can make your own
or play around with it and create something new.
Thank you so much.
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