TIMOTHY JORDAN: Joining me now to talk more about Nest Hub Max
is Prabhu.
Welcome.
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So let's start with a quick overview.
Tell us about the larger screen, the camera,
and all of the cool features that they activate.
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: So Nest Hub Max
is our premium smart display designed
for the center of your home, and it
builds on all of the great experiences
we built with the Google Nest Hub, which
we launched last year.
So we've got a 10-inch inch HD screen
for an even bigger screen for your Google photos
and for watching YouTube TV and all of the other experiences
there.
It's got premium stereo sound built in.
And it's also got a really helpful camera
with all kinds of features and experiences that it can offer--
everything from video calling with Google Duo
to peace of mind through the built-in Nest Cam functionality
that allows you to keep an eye on what's
happening at home to personalization
through a feature that we're calling Face Match.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Hmm.
Very cool.
And what's your favorite feature?
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: So I personally love the video
calling with Duo, because I've got a two-and-a-half-year-old
at home, and he loves to call his grandparents on our Nest
Hub Max at home.
And the auto-framing feature of our Duo calling
allows him to run around the room,
and my parents can still keep track of what's
happening in his busy life.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome.
Let's talk for a moment about privacy.
And there's a huge consumer demand
for privacy and transparency about
our personal information-- how it's stored and how it's used.
And this seems like one of those things
that the team was particularly passionate about and proud of.
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: Absolutely.
You're absolutely right.
We thought about privacy from the very beginning
of our process designing the Nest Hub Max,
and actually, even going further back, the Nest Hub.
One of the reasons that we had our first smart display be
one without a camera is because we
wanted to make it available as a device
that you would feel comfortable putting
in any room of your house.
At the same time, we knew that the camera unlocks
a lot of helpful functionality, and we
wanted to provide that option as well for consumers.
And so the way we thought about designing
the camera was very much with privacy at the forefront.
We thought about easy and simple controls
for all of the features, which are all opt-in features,
and you choose what you want to use.
And there's simple controls, like the hardware switch
on the back of the device that lets you quickly just turn off
the camera and the microphones.
On top of that, taking a step back
from the individual products, we as Google Nest
have also tried to define a set of privacy commitments
for the home, which articulates our point of view on what it
means for us to respect your privacy in all of the products
that we build.
And those are really specific, factual commitments
about what you can expect with your personal data
when you're using our products in your home.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: One of the really insightful things
about the keynote that resonated with me
was that there's a fundamental difference between a smart home
and a helpful home.
Can you define that difference?
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: Sure.
So smart home technology is fantastic.
It helps us solve all kinds of really
interesting and important problems in our homes
and in our lives.
But one of the challenges with smart home technology
is it's kind of complicated.
It's not that easy to use.
And so we wanted to think about how
we can solve that as we push forward
with our vision for the helpful home.
And there's a few key tenets for what we think
the helpful home looks like.
One is that the products in it should
be easy to use for everyone in the home.
The second is it should feel personal.
As you use these devices, they should
get to know you and be able to provide an experience that's
tailored to you and your family.
The third is they should work really well together.
These devices aren't just operating in a vacuum
individually.
They're helping fill out your entire home,
and so your whole home should work together really well.
And then the last is, of course, the one
we just mentioned-- that it should really
respect your privacy and that privacy should
be part of the design of all of the products
that you bring into your home.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Let's talk about design a bit more.
I think designing for a screen that's
meant to be viewed up close, far away,
and from different angles-- it seems like a really difficult
problem.
Can you talk about your design process
while addressing that challenge?
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: Absolutely.
So when we started working on the Google Nest
Hub, the first smart display that we built,
we were thinking about that first and foremost.
Because we wanted this device to feel like an ambient,
glancing device, not one that needs your
focused attention for long periods of time.
And so we designed the user experience on a device
to be readable from a variety of distances.
Obviously, the fact that it's voice
means that it can be used from both near and far.
Then when we went to the Nest Hub Max
and we added a camera to the device,
the other thing that we thought about
was how can the camera help solve that same problem for you
and your family in the home?
And so an important decision we made
was to provide a really wide field of view for the camera.
It's got a 127-degree field of view.
So if you think about all of the experiences
that you're using the camera for,
from video calling, where it allows you to move around
the room with auto-framing, to the built-in Nest Cam
functionality, where you can get a pretty good view of what's
happening in the room, to the personalization with Face
Match, where our thinking was, the device
should be able to tell that you're looking at it,
when you can see it, and when you would
be able to receive the personalized experience
that it's giving you.
And so all of those design decisions
helped us to feel like we're extending
that, whether near or far, it's a great experience
from the Nest Hub to the Nest Hub Max.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Awesome.
OK, one last thing.
During user research, what was the most fun thing
that you saw someone do that you didn't expect?
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: So one of the things
I love about our user research is
that we get to see how our products fit into their homes,
and we sort of get to feel the impact that we're having
on real homes and real people.
And one small example of an insight
that we get from that research is, hey,
where do people put our devices when
we get them in their homes?
And we learn a lot from, for example, the other Googlers who
test our products and help give us feedback
before we ship them to the public.
And there was one email thread where
a Googler who was testing a Nest Hub Max
showed a photo of his living room, where he had the Nest Hub
Max, which is already a pretty big screen,
sitting right next to his big flat-screen TV on the wall.
And that was obviously not what I
had expected, because I figured these devices are big enough
that you're going to put this bigger screen in a room that
doesn't really have another screen.
But we had a dialogue with the Googler,
and we realized the value of checking your assumptions
and learning from what people do to fit
your products into their home.
So he loved the photo frame in his living room
and loved that you could see it from a little farther away
because it was bigger.
He loved the fact that it had a clock that he
could look at at any time.
He loved that he could control his TV in his home theater
system by voice through this device.
And so I think that every time we actually see
how our products fit into people's homes, we learn a lot,
and that's one of the most fun examples of research
that we do.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Thanks for swinging by, Prabhu.
This has been really insightful.
PRABHU BALASUBRAMANIAN: Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.