LAURENCE MORONEY: Welcome to the Googleplex.
Today I'm meeting with Michelle Haq,
who's a product manager on the Google Fit platform.
Now, the Google Fit platform is capable of doing
so many things, and Michelle is going to tell us
all about them today.
Michelle, thanks so much for coming having coffee with me.
Everybody wants to know about Fit.
Everybody wants to learn more about Fit.
What exactly is Fit?
What exactly is the Fit platform?
What does it do?
MICHELLE HAQ: The main goal of the Fit platform
is to have a place for the entire user's fitness history
consolidated.
So this means that if I have one app that I
use to log my calories, a heart rate
monitor that I'm using when I'm running,
and a third app where I log my cycles or my bike rides,
then all of the data can be in Fit and these apps
can interact in a meaningful way.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
MICHELLE HAQ: And then the other cool thing that Fit does
is that it basically creates a computation layer where
we detect your active time, your steps, your distance,
your speed, et cetera, and we basically turn the 1 billion
Google Play Service Android devices into free fitness
trackers, and then we allow developers to access the data
from those computations.
And then you've probably also noticed
that we have a Google Fit app.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Of course.
MICHELLE HAQ: So the app, I think,
really illustrates very well the power
of the platform because in it, you
can see the user's full fitness history.
You can see your weight from any smart scales that
are connected to Fit, you can see runs
from any of our running partners,
like for example, RunKeeper, Strava,
and then you also see our all day activity.
That showcases the fitness tracker
computations that we have.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And I love how it reminds me, hey,
you've met your goal for the day,
and every day when it gets earlier and earlier,
it feels really good.
Not meeting you goal for the day at midnight,
yet meeting your goal for the day at 4:00 PM feels good.
MICHELLE HAQ: That's great.
We're happy about that.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So that's a great user story
there about it, but what about developers?
What's the developer story for Fit?
MICHELLE HAQ: So as a developer, there's
a few things you can use Fit for.
One of the cool use cases is taking
advantage of the computations.
So if I want to build, say, a running app,
then I don't have to do that from scratch anymore.
I can subscribe to all of the data that Fit is computing.
Another cool thing I can do is use Fit
as a proxy to get access to the user's fitness data.
So I can get access to the data from the user of other apps
that connect to Fit, the hardware that
connects to Fit, et cetera.
And then one cool thing you can do
as an app maker or even a hardware maker
is use Fit as your API for getting data
to other developers in lieu of building an API.
And even if you already have an API,
Fit is a good proxy for the fragmented fitness ecosystem
that we have, and so it's still a good idea
to integrate with Fit in order to get
more access to the people who might want to read your data.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK, cool.
There's one thing there that sometimes
makes the spidey senses tingle when you hear about people
reading your data, that there might
be like some privacy implications or anything
like that.
MICHELLE HAQ: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: What you do to address that?
MICHELLE HAQ: This is really important to us,
making sure that the user knows who's reading their data.
So as a developer, if I want to read a user's data
or write to it, then the user has to give me
explicit permission to do.
So the user will get a pop up, and it's going to say,
this developer wants to read this data from you.
The user has to say yes.
And then at any time, the user can also
go into the Google Settings app and revoke access to their fit
history from any app.
So at the end of the day, the power
to distribute your fitness history
is in the hands of the user.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So I can imagine
when building a platform like this, testing
is something that's a little different with a fitness
platform.
It's not like an app where you can just
get automatic testing of it.
You've got to go out and actually do stuff.
How did that work out?
Did you have any fun with it?
MICHELLE HAQ: Yeah.
Well, I can say the entire team is
a lot fitter because of the testing
because you do have to go out.
You have to run.
You have to cycle.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I think I need to join your team.
MICHELLE HAQ: Yeah.
This is the only team I've been on where going for a run
during lunch is adding value to your project, which is really
fun.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Wow.
Nice.
MICHELLE HAQ: There was a guy on our QA team
who used to tell me, I don't run, I'm not a runner,
but he wanted to test out Fit so he started running,
and recently he did his first four mile run, which I think
is a pretty long distance.
It was kind of nice to see him up his game
because he wanted to use our product and test it out.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So it's impacting his life as well as
his career.
MICHELLE HAQ: Yeah, I hope so.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So Michelle, one of the things
is when you're building a platform like this,
there's always somebody who comes up with something really
innovative that just comes out of the blue and totally
surprises you.
Were there any with Google Fit?
MICHELLE HAQ: Yeah.
There have been a few, actually, but one that comes to mind
is a Wear app, and it's using Fit,
and it's called Max My Fitness Dog.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Max My Fitness Dog.
MICHELLE HAQ: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I love it.
MICHELLE HAQ: It's a virtual pet, and it's this dog,
and to take care of him, you have to stay active.
So it's kind of a cool, gamified fitness thing,
and it's also on Wear.
I love that they were this creative.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That sounds really fun.
I've got to give that a try, but my real dog might get jealous.
MICHELLE HAQ: He might.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So just come back to developers again
for a moment.
We've seen like there's lots of great scenarios
you've mentioned, and maybe somebody
wants to build the next virtual pet or something
along those lines, but how does a developer get started?
MICHELLE HAQ: So you can get started by going
to developers.google.com/fit, and all of our documentation is
there.
We also have a pretty burgeoning G+ community,
and the developers in that community are amazing.
They're very competent.
They even respond to technical questions
and report bugs and make suggestions.
LAURENCE MORONEY: The best community.
MICHELLE HAQ: It's the best community.
I encourage everybody to go join that community once they get
started.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
So developers.google.com/fit?
MICHELLE HAQ: Correct.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
First of all, thanks Michelle Haq for coming and joining us,
and you heard it here, developers.google.com/fit
if you want to get started building fitness apps,
or if you want to start integrating data from sensors
that maybe you don't control, or if you want to build the next
great virtual pet or another great,
innovative scenario like that one.
Thanks so much for joining us, Michelle.
It's been a real blast.
MICHELLE HAQ: Thanks for having me.