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JESSICA: Welcome to "Assistant on Air,"
where we have conversations about building
for Google Assistant.
I'm Jessica, and I'll be your host today.
I'm a Developer Relations Engineer for Google Assistant.
This episode is a little different from our typical two
people sitting and chatting.
We'll be hearing from Arthur, a Product Manager for Assistant
on Wear OS, about how to integrate your Wear OS with App
Actions.
Over to Arthur.
ARTHUR SHEYN: Hi my name is Arthur Sheyn,
and I'm a Product Manager for Assistant on Wear.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Google Assistant.
I have several Google Home devices,
and I love the hands-free helpfulness Assistant
brings to me around the house.
Turning off lights, controlling music,
checking traffic is all simply faster with Assistant.
But what about outside the home?
Today we're excited to continue to expand Assistant's
helpfulness in new directions.
As computing devices become more prolific,
the number of ways we can engage with those devices
continue to grow.
Many users already rely on Assistant
when engaging with their smartphones.
But there are many instances where it's just not
practical to interact with your mobile device.
Your hands might be full, your phone is stuck in your bag,
or you have it on the charger at home.
Smartwatches help bridge this gap
by providing an easily accessible, always available
screen.
These devices, however, can be difficult to touch and type on.
And the screen size can limit how much
information can be shown.
That's where Assistant comes in, enabling users
to issue voice commands to their Wear OS device,
to quickly complete critical user journeys.
Let's take a look at some of the ways Assistant is now
supported on Wear OS devices.
We recently partnered with Samsung
to bring Assistant to the Galaxy Watch 4
to help streamline tasks that work well on the wrist.
Assistant will be able to support
actions that are watch-focused, such as setting an alarm
or timer, as well as more complex phone-based actions
when connected to your mobile device,
such as starting a phone call or playing media on the phone.
We are also excited to be bringing support
for App Actions to Wear OS.
Let's take a quick look at how App Actions works.
Similar to how you add App Actions to a mobile app,
you can use the shortcuts.xml file
to add voice functionality to your Wear OS app.
This allows you to provide a more consistent experience
with your app across devices.
Capability tags in shortcuts.xml tell
Google which BIIs can access your in-app functionality.
Assistant parses the user's request
using natural language understanding
and identifies the appropriate BII.
Assistant will then fulfill the user's intent
by launching your app to the specified content or action.
These health and fitness BIIs, used today in mobile apps,
will be enabled for Wear OS apps,
meaning users can trigger the same expected integrations
on your Wear apps.
When partnered with the Health Services and Health Connect
APIs, you can create a cohesive, secure health and fitness
experience for your users that scales easily
across both mobile and Wear OS devices.
Let's take a look at how this will
work for a health and fitness app that has integrated
App Actions on Wear OS.
Users will be able to trigger the BII by saying "start
my run" to the Assistant.
Assistant will launch the run-tracking app feature
automatically.
To ensure a great user experience
with App Actions on Wear, developers
will need to make sure that apps provide feedback to users
after they trigger Assistant.
Haptic feedback, such as the vibration, and audio responses
such as dings, can be great tools to inform users
if their request was successful or unsuccessful.
App Actions isn't the only integration path
we plan to enable for the Assistant with Wear OS apps.
Let's take a look at how to voicify your media-based apps
on Wear.
If you've already built a media app
for mobile with Assistant functionality implemented,
you will be able to adapt these same features to bring
voice-first functionality to your users on Wear.
By default, when a user's watch is connected to their phone,
any Assistant requests to the watch for media initiation
and control will route automatically to the phone
and will be fulfilled by your media mobile app.
To control media playback directly on Wear OS apps,
you can use the same media session API
from mobile in your Wear OS app.
Assistant can then access the transport controls
for playback, allowing users to navigate the media
content all through a simple voice query to their watch.
Developers can add this functionality to existing media
sessions by ensuring their media session includes
transport controls and properly updating the media metadata.
This means that you won't have to create
custom BIIs for handling media content within your app,
allowing you to spend less time focused on manually designing
conversational flow for media controls, and more time
to focus on the rest of the user experience.
Let's take a look at how one of our partners, Spotify,
is integrating Assistant with their Wear OS app.
When a Spotify user is out on a run without their phone,
for example, they can say to their watch Assistant--
SPEAKER: Hey, Google, play Florence and the Machine.
ARTHUR SHEYN: --and Spotify's Wear app
will launch an appropriate track fulfilling the user's request.
Adding Assistant functionality to your apps on Wear OS
devices enables you to create delightful, low-friction
pathways for your users to engage with your Wear OS apps
through voice.
We're excited to see what you build.
Don't forget to watch out for our Assistant on Auto
session, as well as the Voice Global Keynote for more ways
to build with Assistant.
Check out the developer documentation
for more details on how to implement these App Actions
and media sessions on your Wear OS apps
and to bring your users more voice-forward experiences
through Google Assistant.
You can sign up for our newsletter
and follow us on Twitter for updates and announcements
for new features for Google Assistant.
Thanks for watching.
JESSICA: Thank you so much, Arthur, for sharing with us.
We hope that you liked today's show.
If you have suggestions for future episodes,
please leave a comment below.
Follow us on Twitter for updates and new episodes.
Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter.
I'm Jessica, chat with you next time.
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