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LUKE DAVIS: Welcome to "Assistant on Air,"
where we have conversations with the people that
build for the Google Assistant.
I'm Luke Davis and I'll be your host today.
Today, we'll be chatting with Aygul, who's a Google Developer
Expert based out of London working on the Google
Assistant.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Hi!
LUKE DAVIS: Hi!
[LAUGHTER]
Why don't you introduce yourself to everybody.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Thank you so much for having me.
LUKE DAVIS: Thank you so much for coming.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: My name is Aygul.
I'm a Google Developer Expert for the Google Assistant,
just like you mentioned.
I'm also Google Developer Group lead for London,
and the Women Techmakers Ambassador.
LUKE DAVIS: Wow.
That's a lot of responsibility.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Thank you.
LUKE DAVIS: So you're based out of London,
but you actually travel and speak at lots of events
all over the world?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Thank you.
Yeah, that's an amazing opportunity.
Actually, last year was really, really incredible
because I got the chance to give 40 talks in 12
different countries--
LUKE DAVIS: That's amazing.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: --and meet lots and lots of passion
developers and share my love for the Google Assistant
all over the world.
LUKE DAVIS: So yesterday, you were telling me
about one of those trips where you were in Dubai, right?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yes, yes, correct.
Yeah, I was there to give a keynote [INAUDIBLE] Dubai
and the weather was really, really hot.
It was plus 40 Celsius, which is must be around 105 Fahrenheit.
LUKE DAVIS: Wow.
That's amazing.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah, I was melting.
And that same evening, I came back to hotel,
and I decided to build Sunscreen Check
and put it out there for people to use.
LUKE DAVIS: So what does Sunscreen Check do?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Sunscreen Check is in actual Google,
which helps people to stay safe in the sun
and pick the right sun protection--
LUKE DAVIS: Interesting.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: --in order to protect themselves
from the UV radiation.
As you probably know, skin cancer
is the most common type of cancer in the whole world.
And just in the United States, around 10,000 people
are being diagnosed every single day.
LUKE DAVIS: That's amazing.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah.
That's insane, and I just felt I have
to do something about that.
And that, you know, hot weather in Dubai
just was also additional thing that it all came together.
And I just decided to sit down and just develop the app
and put it out there.
LUKE DAVIS: Wow.
That's incredible.
Like, it's amazing to me to think
about the downstream consequences of that one night
in Dubai.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yes.
LUKE DAVIS: Like Aygul goes to this conference.
She's hot.
She builds this amazing thing.
As a consequence, tens of thousands
of people all over the world are certainly
getting protection against carcinogenic radiation--
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah.
LUKE DAVIS: --that they wouldn't get otherwise.
And like, really, that one night might
have saved people's lives.
Very likely will save people's lives in the aggregate.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: I really hope so.
LUKE DAVIS: What kind of usage is your action getting so far?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah, it's actually getting--
hundreds of people everyday are using it.
LUKE DAVIS: Oh, wow.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: And overnight, I
got thousands of people using it.
I actually did zero marketing budget, spendings, and-- yeah.
LUKE DAVIS: So how did you get so much usage without actually
marketing it at all.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah, I was just lucky
because the Google Assistant provides
such amazing functionality called Implicit Invocation.
LUKE DAVIS: Oh.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah, which means
that without even knowing that this app exists
and before even people learned the name of the app,
they were able to discover it because Google actually
recommended the app.
Yeah.
It's really amazing.
Because just by building something
which is useful and also unique, you
can put your app in the hands of thousands of people
all over the world.
And people are using it all over,
you know, from America and in Europe and all the way
to Australia.
LUKE DAVIS: That's amazing.
How do you know that?
What kind of analytics did you capture?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: I'm using--
actually some Google Analytics.
LUKE DAVIS: Just the Actions analytics right there?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Absolutely.
And I can see it, and it's a really, really inspiring
and humbling experience.
And it feels that, you know, that it was time well spent.
LUKE DAVIS: Yeah.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: And the Implicit Invocation
means that it's so powerful.
Because, as you can imagine, app discoverability
is as old as time.
Developers are just really eager to learn
how to put their app on devices of users and find their users.
And in this case, you don't even need anything.
I didn't spend marketing.
And I even did an experiment.
I didn't even tweeted about that.
LUKE DAVIS: Oh, wow.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah, I just thought, let me do that.
Let me put it there on the market, on the directory,
and see what happens.
And then I'm waking up the next morning,
and people are using it all over the world.
And it was really an amazing experience.
And now, I truly believe, and I love telling people
during my talks that-- it's actually true
that you can actually do that.
You can actually just develop the app.
You don't need to be an amazing marketing genius.
Just by developing something useful,
you can actually find the thankful user.
LUKE DAVIS: You say that you don't
have to be a marketing genius, but I've seen you on Twitter.
You actually are kind of a marketing genius.
You have this huge reach.
Like, how did all that happen?
How did you get involved with all this stuff?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Thank you so much.
I don't know how it happened.
I think that just sharing the useful content
and helping people to learn things.
And I post a lot about Google Assistant.
I think that just that single thing just
happened to find the people who are following me and hoping
to learn something new about Google
Assistant every single day.
LUKE DAVIS: So you're out there doing this GDE stuff now.
You're building amazing life-saving actions
on the Google Assistant.
You're jet-setting all over the world,
but you didn't start as a developer working
on voice apps.
You started in like quantum chemistry.
Like, how did that transition go?
How did you wind up doing this kind of thing?
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: You're absolutely right.
I actually did my PhD in quantum chemistry.
Then I moved to the marketing team at Google.
Now, I'm doing Google Assistant.
Yeah, I actually truly believe that having
that diverse experience helps people
to build really amazing apps.
LUKE DAVIS: Yeah.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: And I think that all the [INAUDIBLE]
you know, thinks of [INAUDIBLE] very good app.
And this is my thing because we bring this background
and build all those kind of actions for the Google
Assistant and build different actions, you know.
Some build for something for about science,
and other people maybe have a DJ background
and build something about music there.
Then we have gamers coming and building
games for the Google Assistant.
I think that's what makes the platform unique, because we
have all kinds of actions out there for all kind of segments
of users.
So, yeah, I'm building apps using my background
and experience.
I think that's what makes this platform really truly
unique and interesting and relevant for everybody
out there.
LUKE DAVIS: Well, I am personally so glad
that you have decided to spend some of your time building
Actions on Google for me and for the sake of all the
[INAUDIBLE] people who might get skin
cancer all around the world.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah.
Thank you.
LUKE DAVIS: Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming and talking to us today.
AYGUL ZAGIDULLINA: Yeah.
Thank you so much.
It was a pleasure in meeting you.
Thank you.
LUKE DAVIS: I had a great time.
We hope you liked the show today.
If you have suggestions for future episodes,
please leave a comment below.
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I've been Luke.
Chat with you next time.
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