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PREETHI SUNDARADEVAN: Hi.
My name is Preethi, and I am a Partner Technology Manager here
at Google.
My team works with partners and developers
to build exceptional integrations
on Google Assistant.
I've been at Google over seven years,
and I'm based out of the San Francisco Bay area.
Welcome to this session on discovery for App Actions.
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Now that you've heard about the types of intents
we're launching, vertical intents, custom intents,
and common intents, let's talk about how you can
be successful on the platform.
Whether you're building an App Action
to help with creating a social media posting
or with online shopping, your users
are out there looking for an easier way
to get those tasks done.
Just as it's important to build a strong voice-powered
experience that deep links into your app,
it's also important to make sure that it's
easy to find those experiences.
That's why Google is investing significantly
in discovery for App Actions.
Let's talk about some general discovery
options that are available.
The Assistant can suggest App Actions, even when the app
name is not specified.
It can also proactively recommend an App Action
when a user isn't quite sure what to do.
All of this is based on the user's habits
and past behavior.
Let's say you have a user that regularly follows
Taylor Swift on Twitter.
Let's say this user has tried the Google Assistant
and said, "Hey Google, show me Taylor Swift on Twitter"
a number of times before.
The next time the user opens the Assistant to just simply
search for Taylor Swift, a suggestion
will show up at the bottom of the Google Assistant app
to show on Twitter.
The user can either tap the suggestion
or say the voice command to go to the natural next step
of looking at that profile.
I also mentioned that the Assistant can proactively
suggest an action, even when the user isn't sure what to do.
Let's assume a user opens up the Assistant
and pauses for a couple of seconds.
In this case, the Assistant will suggest that the user
try saying a popular action.
Let's look at another example.
Let's say you're a loyal Walmart customer.
You enjoy using the Walmart grocery app
to make online orders.
You also enjoy using the Google Assistant
to very quickly and easily book a time with Walmart.
Now if you've done this a number of times,
the next time you happen to, let's say, open the Assistant,
and you find yourself not sure what to do because,
hey, that happens to the best of us,
the Assistant will suggest that you
try saying, "Book a time with Walmart,"
just in case that was something you
were meaning to do this week.
So what does this mean for developers?
How can you ensure that your app action
is ready to help the user at exactly the right time?
Just keep one thing in mind.
Make sure you think about the user experience
early on when you're integrating.
That way, when a user tries it out for the first time,
and if they have a positive experience,
there's a higher likelihood that they'll do it again.
That's it.
The rest is based on user habits.
There's no additional work required.
Just make sure that your app action
delivers a positive experience every single time.
Let's take a step back and look at how users
engage with their mobile apps.
Consider this.
Studies have shown that the average user
has more than 40 apps on their phone.
Each user is unique, and they have their own specific needs.
Which is why we're excited about a new feature called shortcuts,
which allows users to customize a short voice command to access
their favorite apps.
It also comes with the convenient settings UI, which
we'll talk you through next.
Let's look at a user that enjoys using the MyFitnessPal app
to check their calorie intake.
She has tried using the Google Assistant
to say, "Hey Google, check my calories on MyFitnessPal."
And she enjoyed the experience so much
that she developed a habit of doing it everyday after lunch.
Now with shortcuts, she has the ability
to customize that exactly the way she wants.
All she has to do is say, "Hey Google, create a shortcut."
And she's immediately transported
into the settings interface for Assistant-enabled apps.
In this first tab, she'll see a list of suggested shortcut
commands based on the apps that she uses most frequently.
She can click on the plus sign next to the MyFitnessPal
shortcut to add it to her list of shortcuts.
Next, she can customize it to just two words if she wants.
Check calories.
Note how the app name does not need to be specified.
And now she's happier with how much faster
it's going to be when she does it every day.
The best part for developers is that users now
have the power to make your app their go to when they want
to get something done quickly.
But that's not all.
After a shortcut is created, it's
eligible to show up as a suggestion at the bottom
of the Google Assistant app.
Let's look at another example.
Are you someone that likes to look up
hiking trails on AllTrails?
Did you create a shortcut to make
it easy to start recording a hike in the app?
Let's assume the answer is yes, and that you created a shortcut
for start my hike.
After using it a couple of times,
you'll notice that when you open the Google Assistant app,
it shows up as a suggestion at the bottom of the screen.
You can either tap the suggestion
or you can say the voice command,
and it'll take you directly into the AllTrails app
to start recording that hike.
So what can developers do to take advantage of shortcuts?
There's no additional work required.
After you implement your App Actions intents
in your actions.xml file, you can
sit back and relax knowing that Google
will take care of the rest.
But what if you're a developer that wants to go further?
What if you want to raise awareness in your user base
about the convenience of creating a shortcut command?
There is one thing you can do.
Promotion within your app.
Discovery is best when it's contextual.
Here's an example of what Yahoo Mail is
planning to promote in their app in the next couple of months.
Later this year, we'll also share best practices
for developers that want to take that extra step
and promote within their app.
And there you have it.
To recap, we talked about general discovery options
like suggestions and proactive recommendations
with the try saying prompt.
We also talked about a new feature called shortcuts.
We hope you found this session useful in understanding
the discovery options available to you.
And with that, I'd like to hand it
over to Jamie from our Partnerships
Team who is interviewing Corey Bozarth from MyFitnessPal
to talk about their experience integrating with App Actions,
and also how they're thinking about discovery.
A big welcome to Corey and Jamie.
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JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: Awesome.
Thanks so much, Preethi.
And thanks everyone for joining us today.
I'm Jamie Hirschhorn, and I lead some of our product
partnerships work over here on the Google Assistant.
I'm based in New York.
And I've been at Google for around seven years.
I'm joined by a very special guest today, our fearless
friend and VP of product over at MyFitnessPal, Corey Bozarth.
Welcome, Corey.
He's joining us from California and has a strong track record
of building some amazing brand and user
experiences at MyFitnessPal and previously
at Yahoo, Visa, PayPal, and Wells Fargo and others.
One fun fact about Corey is that he has recently
developed a serious passion for woodworking.
So we're hoping that maybe we can learn a thing or two today
during our session.
But anyhow, thanks so much for joining us, Corey.
Welcome.
COREY BOZARTH: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
I really do appreciate it.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: Well let's dive right in.
We're really eager to hear about your team's experiences
and how you think about the Assistant
and how you've thought about building for the Google
Assistant.
So there's so much new technology out there today
for app developers.
How did your team choose to build and work with us
on the Google Assistant?
COREY BOZARTH: Yeah, so we chose to build for Google
Assistant for a couple reasons.
Number one is just the ubiquitous nature
of the platform.
It's everywhere and represents a very substantial portion
of the MyFitnessPal audience.
And then number two, given that reach and penetration
and the fact that we're always looking for ways to improve
the nutrition tracking and logging
experience for our users, we looked
at Google Assistant as a really important strategic area
of opportunity for us.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: And why did you decide to prioritize voice
specifically?
And what kinds of problems were you
trying to solve by launching an experience like this
with App Actions?
COREY BOZARTH: Sure.
So we decided to prioritize voice for MyFitnessPal
because really, long term, we do actually see voice
as an incredibly powerful interaction model that
represents tremendous upside in terms of removing
the friction that's inherent in the nutrition
tracking and logging experience.
And we viewed App Action specifically as a really great
low-cost way for us to begin this journey in earnest,
especially given how focused App Actions is on driving
re-engagement with our users.
And especially how easy it is to integrate.
In terms of which problems we're trying to solve,
it's really simple.
It's straightforward for us.
All we're trying to do is make it as easy and efficient
as possible for our users to track their nutrition.
You know, we're in the business of helping people establish
new healthy habits, if you will, and we all
know establishing habits is incredibly difficult.
So any indication or any potential impediment
to that habit formation just can totally
derail someone's progress.
And so we look at App Actions as really a way for us
to supplement the experiences we've
built leveraging voice to make that experience so much easier.
And so just a really exciting opportunity for us.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: Once you took the leap
and decided to move forward, what
was the actual development experience
like for your product and eng teams?
COREY BOZARTH: Yeah, the development experience
was actually incredibly simple.
It took one of our engineers just a two-week sprint
to complete the development, and largely it's based on the fact
that it integrates so effectively with our existing
deep link framework.
And I'll be honest, I was surprised
at the level of upside that we're
getting from a feature with such little overhead.
So it's been surprisingly simple.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: Let's dive in a little bit
deeper now and hear about how MyFitnessPal thinks
more broadly about discovery and how
this played a role in your App Actions experience
and how you just think about it more broadly as a business.
So why is discoverability really essential
for MyFitnessPal and some of the other connected fitness brands
under Under Armour?
COREY BOZARTH: Sure.
So discoverability is important for us
because, quite frankly, it's not easy to deliver features
and functionality to your users, especially
at the scale of MyFitnessPal.
There's so much rigor that goes behind figuring out
what we want to deliver to help our users be more successful.
And so if we have a discoverability or engagement
problem, we're dead in the water.
So when we take the time to figure out those features
and functionality that we want to deliver,
if the value isn't clear and conspicuous to our users,
then really what's the point?
And so we need to make sure that if we're
putting in the time and energy to develop something
like this with Google--
or any partner, really--
there has to be enough awareness and usage of the feature for us
to gauge product market fit and ultimately iterate
on a long term.
And so really the integration of App Actions with MyFitnessPal
was really no different.
But one of the great things that we're
discovering through this process is that there's so many levers
available to us right out of the box
to help drive discoverability and engagement.
So whether it's from the settings UI
all the way over to Google making intelligent decisions
around recommending shortcuts to our audience,
there just seem to be a host of features
that we can rely on to help make sure discoverability
wasn't a problem.
And on the topic of shortcuts, that's
really quite frankly blue sky.
We're just excited to see how our users engage
with shortcuts.
As I mentioned earlier, we're in the business of helping
people establish good habits.
And that's incredibly hard, but it's also incredibly unique.
How these users go about establishing those habits
is really a unique process.
Those can be such personalized actions to take.
So we're excited to see how our audience leverages
that capability to make their overall tracking and nutrition
journey in achieving their health and fitness
goals that much easier.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: So Corey, how do you
think about the long-term success
of an integration like App Actions for the business?
COREY BOZARTH: We're considering long-term success
with App Actions like we do with everything we develop,
and that's really going to start with making sure
that we're monitoring the usage and the engagement
with the feature set.
And really the way we're going to do
that is we're going to try to overdrive discoverability
and awareness initially, just to make sure we're saturating
our audience with the idea that this feature can add value.
And one of the reasons, actually,
what we're kind of excited about,
too, is I talked about some of the features
and functionality that were available outside right
out of the box.
There's another one upcoming, which
is the in-app promo, which we're excited about given
the audience is going to have to-- getting this App
Actions in front of our audience in a very
conspicuous and meaningful way to make sure
that they understand how using this feature set
is going to help them be more successful on their health
and fitness journey.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: And what are some things
that you're looking forward to from Google in the future?
COREY BOZARTH: Look, we're always
excited to see what Google cooks up next.
But quite frankly, I think what's
exciting for us at this point is just
continuing this journey of the collaboration
and the co-development.
We really do believe that there's tremendous
upside here to unlock real value for our community of users
in partnership with Google.
So we look at this as really just the beginning
of a longer-term relationship and journey.
So we're excited about.
JAMIE HIRSCHHORN: Thank you again, Corey, so much
for jumping on, for your time, for your fearlessness,
and trying a new project like App Actions with us,
and for integrating on the Google Assistant.
We really appreciate you jumping on today.
We know that discoverability is essential for both
our users and developers.
And with App Actions, we want to make
it simpler by baking discoverability features
into our platform through things like recommendations,
suggestion chips, and in-app promos.
Please check out the assistant developer website
to learn more about these features.
Thank you.
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