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DOUG STEVENSON: Hey, everybody.
Welcome to another "Meet Firebase,"
where you get to meet Googlers that make Firebase happen.
I'm Doug Stevenson, Developer Advocate with the Firebase
team.
And with me on the show is Amber Heinbockel.
Amber.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Hi.
DOUG STEVENSON: Nice to meet you.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Good to see you.
DOUG STEVENSON: And thanks for being on the show.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: My pleasure.
DOUG STEVENSON: And I understand you're here from the Cambridge
office, right?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: I am, yes.
I'm part of the Fabric team.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK.
So Fabric just had some news.
What is that?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Well, we joined forces with Firebase,
and we just launched at DevSummit, Crashlytics in beta.
So we're really proud to announce that.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK, so now you can
use Crashlytics in your Firebase app
and view it from the Firebase console, right?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Exactly.
Exactly.
DOUG STEVENSON: And so what was your role
in making that happen.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Well, I'm part of a team that
worked on the app home portion, so more on the analytics side.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK, well, congratulations on the launch.
And I'm sure--
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Thank you.
DOUG STEVENSON: --developers out there
are finding that very useful by now.
So what specifically are you doing
to help the Fabric and Firebase teams team up?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Well, since joining Google as a whole,
we've had this opportunity to do something called sprints.
And since joining, I've decided to become a sprint master.
So so far I've already held two sprints
for the Fabric and Firebase team to meet, join forces, be
on the same coast, I jokingly say exchange pheromones,
and then we can build great products together.
The one thing that I find that's really interesting
is that we're all really passionate about developers.
And so when we joined forces, it was like meeting brothers
and sisters from another team that
care as much about developers as we do on Fabric.
So it's a really easy transition to be here.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah, and that's
what we do with Firebase-- very developer-focused, Fabric, very
developer-focused.
So we have, in a sense, the same mission,
but now we have all these new products coming together.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Exactly.
DOUG STEVENSON: And I know that we already did Digits, right?
So we pulled Digits into Firebase authentication.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Yes.
DOUG STEVENSON: So that's one thing we've already done.
Now Crashlytics will be the primary crash supporter
for Firebase.
So I'm excited to see what happens there.
So the Crashlytics folks are mostly in Cambridge, right?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Mhm.
DOUG STEVENSON: So is that where you live?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Yes, I live in Boston and Cambridge.
Before we joined Firebase, we were
at Twitter, which was right down the street.
So the neighborhood that we're in
is this really dynamic tech community.
And then right in our backyard is MIT and Harvard,
and so there's a ton of energy towards developers
and developer advocacy.
So we have hack weeks and all kinds
of things where we bring students on-site
to work with us and also all kinds of public speaking
opportunities within Cambridge itself,
where we bring the community in to work with us.
DOUG STEVENSON: You mentioned hack week,
so I just got back from to DevFest,
where we did a couple hackathons there.
So I love those so much, and I'm actually
going to write a blog post about that.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Oh, awesome.
DOUG STEVENSON: So if you have anything
to contribute to that I'd love to talk with you--
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: I'd love to.
DOUG STEVENSON: --about hackathons later.
So you also, at home, you watch "Silicon Valley."
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Yes.
Yes.
DOUG STEVENSON: So I've watched all those.
I love it.
I think it hits a little too close to home, personally.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: It really does.
It really does.
DOUG STEVENSON: So what do you think?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Absolutely.
It's one of those shows where the first three times I watched
it-- and this was like over airplanes or sitting
on the couch--
I really had a hard time getting hooked onto it.
And I'm not sure what the turning point was.
Maybe I sat through three episodes
and binge watched it and started getting into the seasons.
And I think my favorite part of it
is, being from Mountain View, being from the Silicon Valley
and having seen, through the late '90s
and into the 2000s, how this area has changed so much,
and especially coming back and working here at Google,
there's so many humorous moments in the way
the actors portray the area.
But it hits a little close to home
because they definitely get it right sometimes.
DOUG STEVENSON: They do Well, I understand
Mike Judge, the creator of the series,
was an engineer in Silicon Valley.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Oh, really?
DOUG STEVENSON: So that's how he has insight.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Probably right during that times,
those early 2000s.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah, and then I guess
he did "Beavis and Butthead" as well.
I don't know what the connection is between the two.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Talented man.
DOUG STEVENSON: And you have one other guilty--
would you say a guilty hobby, guilty pleasure.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Oh, yes.
DOUG STEVENSON: So you watch makeup videos.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Oh, yes, yes.
I don't know if you can tell.
DOUG STEVENSON: Very glamorous.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Very glamorous.
In fact there's a name in Cambridge
that the team calls me which is, when
I do-- so I'm a UX designer.
When I do a certain polish thing,
or I get a tweet from a developer
about some delightful moment that they have in the console,
our team internally calls it "Glambered."
It's been "Glambered."
So back to YouTube videos--
I have a little bit of a hard time falling asleep,
and so I was trying to find something that
didn't get me too invested.
"Silicon Valley" is not the show to watch minutes
before you go to bed.
And so I found YouTube makeup tutorial videos a while ago,
and now I just nerd out over them.
It's a little bit of a hobby.
This summer, in particular, I had
two very close girlfriends get married,
and they gave me the great pleasure of doing their makeup.
DOUG STEVENSON: Oh, OK.
That's an honor.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: For a big day.
So yeah, it's been OK.
I should probably roll off of it a little bit.
DOUG STEVENSON: So you have worked
with young women who are trying to get
into engineering and coding.
Tell me how that's gone for you so far.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: So growing up in Mountain View,
I never saw women who looked like me, talked like me,
or were bubbly and energetic ever in an engineering role
or working in tech companies.
I just didn't even know that that was a possibility.
And so one thing I've been trying to do lately
is going and talking to public school students.
I just spoke to Lawrence Academy and then also
Women Techmakers, which is a Google-hosted event,
as well as Girls Who Code.
And I really want to show a different face
to working in tech.
I think being a designer in technology
is such a wonderful ability to show to billions
of users what your work can do.
And honestly, sometimes when people don't even
realize that they're doing something within a UX
experience that I've developed, and they can complete
the task that they're trying to do,
then I know I've had the greatest success.
So when I see tweets like, oh, that was easy,
or wow, I had this cool moment when
I clicked this button and something happened--
those are the ones that bring me a lot of energy,
and life, and excitement to my job.
And I want to bring that to more women
and girls in the industry.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK.
So for everyone watching at home, if you're watching,
you're thinking I would love to get started on coding
or engineering of any kind.
How would you recommend getting started?
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Well, I would say that coding and engineering
is one way that you can be in, but another way
that you can come in is through design and art.
And so when it comes to designing commercially,
I'd really focus on things like typography, legibility,
usability.
And think about the experiences that you really
struggle with when you open an application or a website
and the frustration points that you have.
And imagine a world where you could make that better.
Because ultimately what we're here to do
is solve problems together.
And so, if we're solving problems successfully,
then you're not going to have those frustration points.
So I would, honestly, start with thinking about the experiences
that you have today and how you would make them better
yourself.
And then really simple--
piece of paper and a pen--
start drawing up those screens of how you might
consider making it better.
And it all starts from there.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK.
OK.
So either way, it's problem solving.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: All problem solving.
DOUG STEVENSON: So if you're in design in UX,
you're solving the problem of usability
and of someone's perception of what's going on on-screen
and how to actually accomplish tasks in your app.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Absolutely.
DOUG STEVENSON: Whereas engineers
are more concerned about how to actually push
the bytes around and maybe even push
the pixels and stuff like that.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Yeah, and I feel like it comes a lot down
to empathy too.
I myself am a user, right?
We're all users.
We all use these devices and experiences.
And I try to empathize the most with the experience
that somebody is having in that moment.
So for instance, you're at a bank,
and you're trying to withdraw money from an ATM,
and your fingers are cold, so you have gloves on.
And so how big do the buttons need
to be on the console for you to be able to hit them
with your gloves on?
Those are the types of empathetic moments
that we can engineer.
And that was a very tactile experience,
but those come through on mobile devices all the time.
DOUG STEVENSON: Well, yeah.
And that's interesting because if that system was developed
in the Bay Area, where everyone is in a kind of warm area,
you don't even think about the fact
that you have to wear bulky gloves
and that you're desperately trying to push a button,
but you can't because it's too cold outside.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Right.
DOUG STEVENSON: So we need diversity.
We need multiple perspectives on how the world works.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Right.
I'm so glad you brought that up, too,
because, in particular when we work on Firebase and Fabric
as we've been working together, we really
start thinking about other countries
and internationalization and how to make our experience easier
for developers all over the world.
And so oftentimes as a designer we have to think of maybe
it's not the fastest internet connection.
Well, how can we give them the information
that they need in order to be successful.
Like, on Crashlytics, how can we let
them know where the bug is in their app
without bogging down their computer?
So basically, we want to get out of the way
so that they can do the best work.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah.
Well, technology needs to get out of the way
so that the product can do what it does.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Absolutely.
Our developers build better apps for everybody.
DOUG STEVENSON: Absolutely.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Everybody wins.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah.
So if you have feedback for us on that, definitely--
we like your feedback because more ideas,
more perspectives definitely make our product better.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Definitely.
DOUG STEVENSON: Well, Amber, it was so great
having you on the show.
I'm glad you were able to make it out here from Cambridge.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: My pleasure.
Nice to meet you.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yes, nice to meet you too.
And thank you for watching this episode of "Meet Firebase."
Be sure to subscribe here to the Firebase channel on YouTube
to get more video content on a bunch of other "Meet Firebase"
with people like Amber and other engineers on the team.
And I'll see you here next time.
Bye-bye.
AMBER HEINBOCKEL: Bye.
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