July 16, 2025 • 37 mins
David Webster is the head of UX at Google Labs, the company’s experimental AI division. When he stepped into the role in 2022, the tech world was scrambling to respond to the rise of ChatGPT — and Google Labs was no exception. Since then, the team has launched several high-profile projects, including the viral NotebookLM. Webster joins Oz to share his philosophy on human-centered design and how it shapes Google’s AI experiments.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story and today
I'm here with Cara Price. Hi. So we were talking
about these episodes of the story, and we realized that
while the other of us we often have an in
depth discussion about the guest or the episode, but that
we weren't capturing that discussion for the podcast and that
felt like a misopportunity. So today we're trying out something new,
(00:35):
which is to have a bit of a chat between
the two of us to intro the guests of the
week and in particular why we think their story matters
to us and to our listeners. So to start of
this week, I wanted to share a thought from our guest,
David Webster about the importance of always considering the user
when developing new technology.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
And it's often a blind spot for the technologists. I mean,
the technologists are not necessarily cold or dispersonal or or cynical.
The probably parents of this new technology, but they might
not realize that their babies their babies ugly.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So, Cara, that was David Webster speaking. He's head of
ux or User Experience, that's something called Google Labs, and
in my opinion, he has one of the most interesting
jobs at Google, because Labs is the division that's responsible
for making consumer facing products that sit on top of
Google's AI models. They've done stuff in the world of
video generation, but probably their most famous product is Notebook LM.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And that's the product that we thought was going to
put us out of business one, the one where you
can feed any websites, document articles you like, and get
back a two way podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Two comforting voices, giggling over whatever the topic at hand
may be. Much like that exactly. This notebook and AM
product kind of grew people's minds and it had fans
from Mark Cuban to AI pioneer Andre Pathy his Mark Cuban, has.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Anybody played with Notebook l LAMB the podcast feature Oh
my God.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So you could take any PDF file, any text.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It could be like your onboarding manual.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
They could be training manual, they could be distribution manuals,
whatever it is, and you feed.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It in there and it turns it into a podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Cuban is very fixtational manuals for whatever reason he is.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
But what does Webster's role have to do with any
of this.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Well, David Webster, as I mentioned, runs Google Labs. Previously,
he worked for this design firm called Ideo, which is
famous for the concept of human centered design, in other words,
doing deep user research to understand what real people want
from our product and then integrating that feedback into the product.
Idea is actually the firm who designed the first mouse
(02:53):
for Apple in the way back when, and Webster has
now been tasked with making delightful, engaging a eye products
for Google. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
You know, it's an interesting moment for this conversation because
Google is getting absolutely beaten up, relatively speaking, by the
stock market because of questions about whether the ad supported
search engine, which is fundamental to its business, will survive
the age of AI exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And David is on the front lines of building the
next wave of consumer products for Google. We spoke about
the philosophy behind how he does that and about his
views on the future of wearable AI. Here's the conversation.
David Webster, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Today, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
You know, when people think about Google, they obviously think
about the search engine. In fact, you know, to Google
became a verb much like to hoover, where we come from,
became a verb for vacuum cleaning in Britain. You work
at Google Labs as the head of UX, Well, what
does labs do and how does it interact with a
(03:55):
larger Google organization.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, Labs is a group that we started in twenty
twenty two. It is actually our reboot of a group
that was around her in the early days of Google,
which was a place where we could experiment with emergent
capabilities and new technologies coming from the research side of
(04:19):
the organization and figure out how to quickly productize those
in new ways and service of Google's missions. So that's
why we brought labs back into existence.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Google's mission being is that still to organize the world's information.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
I joined to stand up the UX component of labs,
and the exciting thing for me was having had a
career in design and UX UX standing of course for
user experiences. I was very aware that we were in
(05:00):
a moment where there was a host actually of unprecedentedly
powerful technologies their time had arrived, and was very conscious
of the significance of user experience and inflecting those technologies
so that the prosu weigh the cons. There were a
bunch of things emerging around twenty twenty two that were contenders.
(05:23):
You know, the blockchain was still a thing. Metaverses were
still a thing, but obviously llms their moment was arriving,
and very quickly we ascertained that they were becoming the
thing and started putting all our efforts into figuring out
how to take the potential of this, you know, significant
(05:45):
platform shift and format it so that it was accessible
and useful to people.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
You just want to sort of go back in time
thirty odd years to kind of give some framing to
this conversation into your background. I'm wonders you can tell
us who Kenji Eko one, if I'm saying that correctly,
who he is, and what we can't understand about your
work without understanding him.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Kenji Ekuan. Kenji Ekuan was absolutely legendary and iconic a
Japanese designer. He was the founder of a company called
GK Design, which is a large Japanese group of design
and creative companies, and in.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
The early days of my career.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Had the privilege of getting to meet him quite serendipetitively.
I studied mechanical engineering originally, then studied industrial design at
the Royal College of Art. Wanted to be both a
deeply technical person and a highly creative person. You had
to kind of pick either or in the UK at
the time, so I was attracted to and moved to
(06:59):
a place where where you didn't have to pick either or,
and one of those places was Japan. And so I
rolled up in Japan, but I didn't have a job
lined up, and via a friend of mine who was
already in Japan, I got an introduction to Kenji Ekuan,
who was this revered chairman of the most iconic design
firm in Japan. If you have ever used soy sauce
(07:22):
of one of those Kickoman soy sauce bottles, beautifully kind
of organically shaped one with the red lead, that's one
of Ekuan's designs.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
One of the most ubiquitous and iconic consumers there.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Is, absolutely and I found myself able to go and
meet the great man. I went into his office. I
was looking around me and it was this thing in
the corner that I couldn't help noticing, which was a
life size fiberglass human body kind of suspended in space
(07:59):
horror onto. He was two axles going through the shoulders
and the ankles, and big kind of chrome wagon wheels
on the axles. After we'd done with this sort of
introductory niceties.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
I said, I couldn't help noticing that thing. What is that?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
He just looked me in the eye and said, this
is my soul chariot and pressed the switch and the
acxules started rotating, and I was awestruck. I thought, this
guy's amazing. This is not your typical Christy senior executive.
He's talking about his soul chariot. And then we got
talking about what my aspirations were, and he looked at
(08:40):
some of my portfolio work from college and he said,
I want you to design motorcycles. And through that experience,
as I worked in his design firm design motorcycles, I
read a lot about him and learned his philosophy and
obviously had some exposure to him. And he has this
way of talking about the central endeavor of design, and
(09:00):
he calls it human machine soul energy.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That is the game, Human machine soul energy.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
That is a game, and that has stuped with me
ever since. So my career has been about the pursuit
of human machine soul energy still is.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
That's a remarkable way of putting it, and especially at
a time when I mean there's all these questions about
Emerson consciousness. There's people who are falling in love with
their ms, treating large language models as spiritual guides. I mean,
this quality of the soul when it comes to technology
is something something which for me is a kind of
(09:38):
fascinating part at the reach of my understanding of what's
going on silicon value right now. But I haven't had
a chance to ask somebody really what they mean by
it and what they think about it. So I have
to ask you right now. I mean, how how does
that phrase become newly relevant given everything we're living through
right now?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Well, it's newly relevant every time I visit, but it's
particularly relevant right now because all of a sudden, really quickly,
there's a bunch of experiences and capabilities that we're securely
on the human side of the human machine equation, and
(10:19):
now those are able to happen on the technology side.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Famously, there's a lot of anthrop of myomorphization of what.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
The lllms can do.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
People use all this language that was previously used for
humans to describe how ILM's work. You know, they say
it's thinking, and you know, the seashore between human and
machine has changed rather radically, rather suddenly, and there's a
lot of figuring out that has to happen to ensure
(10:55):
that that change nets out positively for humans.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Of what you're working on, and I want to ask
you not just what the framing of the problem is,
but what some of the initial answers are before we
get there. Though, You finish up in Japan and in
nineteen ninety seven you Silicon Valley, I believe, which is
the same year that Steve Jobs returns to Apple, and
you take a job at a firm called IDEO, which,
(11:21):
for those who don't know, I think, is kind of
a household name in this design thinking world. It was
also the company that worked with Apple I think in
the eighties to design Apple's first computer mouse. From nineteen
ninety seven to today, working at IDEO until twenty twenty two,
you witness first hand revolution after revolution in terms of
(11:44):
the way humans interact with technology. Where do you place
twenty twenty two and the consumerization of generative AI in
that journey.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
It's interesting because on the one hand, there's one way
of character, which is it's just another cycle, right, which is, Okay,
there's a technology unlock. There's a bunch of investment that happens,
and a bunch of hype that happens, and kind of
Darwinistic explosion of invention of new value that happens. All
(12:20):
of that is true, And so at some level it
feels like Web two point or or feels like the
dotcom moment. But to me it feels very different in
terms of how pervasive this technology is already and definitely
will be. But I think the fundamental character of the
(12:44):
technology makes its potential even more significant. And then for me,
the attraction to IDEO was a continuation of that through line.
You know, engineer who went to art school went to
Japan to be both technologists and create to and then
Ideal famously resolved any dichotomy there. And so IDEO's cultures
(13:09):
point of view philosophically is that it's an absolutely user
centered and just some very motivated to bring that you know,
solving for the users as a kind of fundamental approach
to this extremely significant technology moment.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah, and going back to the mission of Google Labs
that I read at the beginning, Google Labs is where you,
I guess you means the user in this case can
discover and try Google's latest AI experimental products and help
shape the future of AI technology. A very interesting in
second half of that sentence, especially because it's someone at
odds with how people think about the development of AI.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
The general model is, here's a bunch of computer scientists
who are not particularly interested in humans or even humanity
more broadly, and are willing to write it off in
favor of a you know, silicon superintelligence. But here you
are promising us as a role in the development of
the technology.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, that is absolutely the case, certainly something that I
bring from Ideal in certainly in my experience of the
engineering culture at Google, I don't think it is in
denial about the user. But what you do is you
you know, in the approach that Ideal famously used across
all of these waves of technology, it's to characterize successful
(14:40):
and innovation as being in the sort of sweet spot
between feeability, desirability, and viability. Meaning there's a three circle
diagram which is technology, human and business, and a successful
innovation has to be like the middle of that three
circle diagram. It has to matter to humans and be
(15:03):
desirable to them for some reason, and it doesn't get
to exist unless there's a business model that supports it,
and often the conditions around a new technology moment, a
new platform moment can lead to getting to that middle
of the ven diagram territory from the technology circle. So
(15:24):
a technology push that can often feel like an answer
looking for a question.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
It's like, we've.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Invented this new capability, let's figure out how to make
people want it.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
With all due respect to Mark Zuckerberg, this is the
if people are lonely, might not give them fifteen AI
friends school of thought. I don't want reach out town
so we can right.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And it's often a blind spot for the technologists. I mean,
the technologists are not necessarily cold or dispersonal or cynical,
the proud parents of this new technology, but they might
not realize that their babies, their babies ugly, you know.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
And what Ideal.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Strongly believes, what I believe and what we practice in
labs is that you have to, at the very least
also fold in the human at the earliest stage. You
have to and preferably drive it from from the user.
You have to go out there and get curious about
(16:29):
what matters to people on their terms and use that
use what you learn there as the jumping off point.
For generating new ideas about value that you can deliver
within new technology. When you go about it that way,
you're far more lightly to create experiences that users love.
(16:51):
You're more likely to create the kind of value that
you can defend over time as a company because you're
in a you're in an emotional relationship with your users,
and it generally works out a lot better. The thing
that it's often in tension with is speed, because when
a new technology appears, time is of the essence, and
(17:14):
that's very real, and so you have to achieve both.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Had when we come back the double edged sword of
technology and what happens when you innovate too quickly stay
with us. So I mean, let's anchor this in the
(17:44):
tangible world of products that you have incubated and launched
within labs.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So, Google's develop a conference was in May of this year.
I think there were four labs launches that were announced,
maybe a five. I'm not show but correctly if I'm wrong.
But take one of them and explain how it reflects
the process you've just described.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, so let's take one from one of our recently
shared ones. Flow so flows the surface that lets people
interact with the capabilities of the generative video model VO three.
VO is the name of the latest video generation model
Google has, So you know, you can convey your intention
(18:30):
to this model and it will generate incredible, undiscernible from
reality videos. So VO is the model, Flow is the product.
Flow is the means of conveying that intention to the model.
As a filmmaker, so you communicate what you want the
scene to be, you communicate camera instructions, you communicate edits
(18:54):
to it, and Flow as a lab's product. Just as
an example of how that comes about. You know, from
the beginning of Flow, we worked very closely collaboratively with
movie makers. One of our fundamental principles and labs is
co create. Find out the people that you're interested in
making something for and set things up so that you
(19:18):
can actually work with them, and you're in a very
very close feedback loop about how well you're doing in
terms of delivering the kind of experience the matter to them.
So we worked with a bunch of filmmakers and developing Flow,
and it's really interesting you mentioned Notebook LM earlier, there's
another kind of co creation there. We worked with Stephen Johnson,
(19:39):
who's a best selling writer who had been obsessed for years,
for like a decade with this idea of tools for
thought and ways of collecting and formatting all of the
stuff that he you he's when writing a novel, both
(20:01):
his own previous writing has notes, his references, and figuring
out how to make it most useful.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
So he had He was like the.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Their original super user of notebook LM before notebook LM existed.
So we hired him and brought them onto the team
and co created the product with him and a lot
of the core DNA of notebook LM is what it
is because of Stephen.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
What's cool about notebook and LM is rather than just
saying to it, you know Gemini, Let's say I'm interested
in the history of the Nutcracker, and you know ballet,
you can say notebook LM. Here's you know, a great
New Yorker piece about the Nutcracker, a review of a
contemporary production at the Brooklyn Clagory of Music. And here
(20:53):
is you know, a long document about the history of dance.
I don't want to look at anything else, just these
three documents and then provide you with insights and so
in a sense, it puts you in the driver's seat
in terms of it's more like having a research assistant
than just sending out a query and seeing what happens.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
But then the kind of additional layer was and you
can hear it as a two way podcast, and that
final thing seemed to be what blue people's minds most
of all.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I mean, it wasn't entirely surprised that the blue people's
minds because we had been having our minds going by
internally before we launched it, and we knew that this
is gold. You know, this is amazing as in terms
of like delivering on the make the world's information accessible
and useful. This directly served that in a super fresh way.
(21:46):
That was super delightful. You know, a big part of
user experience designs. Don't over index on yourself as the user,
but as a user of notebook LM, the magic has
and more and not. One of the early comments and
our discard feed from actual users about it, well, somebody said,
(22:08):
it makes boring stuff interesting and I use it all
day every day to do that.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I love it to play Devil's advocate for a moment.
Some people say, well, you know, in the age of
l l m's and jernity of AI. Anything that sits
on top of a model is just a rapper. Uh,
and so labs in the wrapper business.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, I mean, like who isn't in the in the wrap?
It's like, I guess I don't really agree with the frame.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
No, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I'm not.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Is every car brand a rapper and internal combustion? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
But to be a bit more substantive about this, right,
why do I need flow? Why can't I just tell
the three really in natural language what I want to achieve?
Like why is a filmmaker? Do I need like a
product layer beyond natural language processing between me and a
video generation model?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, I mean I think you're talking to UX person.
I think it's all about that layer. It's all about
the application layer. It's all about the qualities of the
interaction experience with the underlying technology. I think we've been
in the sort of a command line era for AI
(23:31):
thus far, where it's all about kind of the user
learning this arcane language of prompts and contorting what they
want to make happen into that language to feed it
to the model. That doesn't bring me joy as a user.
I think it doesn't have to be that way. You know,
we can figure out delightful interactions for the user to
(23:56):
convery their intent to the model and for them to
work with the model. And I think it's all about that.
If you look at at how value is built and
defended by the world's most successful companies, certainly in the
consumer sector, it's about UX ya your UX. What are
the qualities of that experience and that's what builds a
(24:17):
character in the brand of a company.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
You mentioned business models yourself, right, Like where does a
flow or notebook m LM? Like how much is it
your job to monetize these new products that you're creating.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Certainly not my job to monetize them. You know.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
The way tech companies in general are configured is you've
got engineering as a discipline. You've got uxit's a discipline.
You've got product management is a discipline, and the product
managers or the or the CEOs essentially of the endeavor
typically and it's their job to take an innovation on
the trajectory from glimpse of value to users to successful product,
(25:02):
including monetization strategy, usually through phases. And so when you're
doing early stage, it's less about are you hitting a
weekly active user target and it's more about are you
seeing fire in the eyes of the users that you're
(25:24):
putting in front of them, And certainly for me, my
currency is more of the latter than the former.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You know, I'm all about helping.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
To create experiences that create that kind of response from
that induce that kind of response in users, and then
you know, pms then have something to play with to
take on the journey towards like successful products, including monetization.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
So that moment for you when the Internet and Mark
Cuban and Capathy and regular people on Reddit are going
crazy for note notebook a M, that's a moment that
that is the magic in the bottle that you spend
every day in such of essentially.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, I mean certainly in terms of outcome, the other
magic in the bottle, like the thing that really motivates
me at least as much of that is that there's
something about just the sort of thrill of the chase,
this idea of kind of before launch, when you've got
like a team, there's this sort of mutual creative euphoric
(26:31):
state you get into when you're you're pushing hard because
you know there's something that you can bring into existence
and if you set things up right with the team.
They're all kind of egging each other on. They're causing
each other to be at their creative best. And then
(26:53):
when it results in an outcome that is obviously striking
a card with users and hopefully making a difference in
the world, then that's that's greedy.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
One of the products that you guys are announced that
the Developer Conference I'd love to spend just a couple
of minutes on is Project Mariner. I mean hosting a
podcast called tech Stuff. We're constantly hearing about agents and
urgentic AI. So even I don't fully know what that means.
I think it means ais that go out in the
(27:28):
world and are able to take action on your behalf
in different fields. So I might say, like, not just hey,
Gemini would be a great itinerary for ten days in
Italy if I want to avoid the crowds in August,
but hey, Agent, I want to go to Italy for
ten days in August. Here's my budget. Please come back
(27:49):
with a fully you know, executed trip, because is that
a fair summary? And then what does Project Mariner do?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I think that's that's a you're framing as a first
summary of you know, the idea of what an agent
is product Mariners an early experiment and achieving that. So
let's create what you just described, which is an agent
that can understand your intention and go and take action
(28:19):
in service of that and primarily via browser based activities.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And what does that mean, like if I if I
use marin it, like, what will my experience be? And
your user research? How long do you think you'll take
the average user to be comfortable with aim making purchase
decisions on spending their money.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Essentially, Well, one of the things that it doesn't do
so far is make the purchases for you, right, it's
not at that point yet, but it will go through
a reasonable set of research and choice characterization and recommendation
steps that would Amuel what you would do the purchase
(29:02):
decision was still in ad theser. So so that's exactly
the kind of thing that it does. But it's not
just for purchasing. It can be for research tasks. You know,
go figure out all there is and all about this
thing that I'm interested in, do some reasoning associated with that,
(29:22):
and come back with a set of conclusions or recommendations
that helped me. And so it's those sort of things.
You can point it out at tasks and it can
go and you know, pursue those tasks on your behalf.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
David had to ask you because you know, you had
this amazing experience of going to Japan as a young man,
you know, meeting one of your idols and then going
out and being assigned the task of you know, design
for motorcycles. Right, part of what you had to do
in that process, I assume was study other motorcycles, meet
(30:02):
motorcycle riders, essentially develop the playbook that you refined at
IDEO and then are executing on now at Google Labs.
Do you worry about a future in which the products
like Mariner, the agentic products get so good that there
is no incentive for humans to go into the world
(30:26):
and develop their own skills and vision by grinding through
tasks that could be automated. But that it was to
our benefit that they were not automated, because it allowed
us to become the people and thinkers and doers that
we are today. I mean, how do you how do
you grapple with that?
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Acknowledge it as a reasonable question. I personally, I don't
worry too much about it because It's funny, I you
know career working in design, it's often to those who
aren't in it, it can seem like the answer to
good design is remove friction, right, and hey, if you
(31:12):
just if you just remove friction, then it's a great
design solution. I think there's a little bit more to
it than that, you know. To answer your question about
my career and all of the struggle and toil the
resulted then hard lessons learned? Do I think those same
lessons would have been learned with some help with that toil,
(31:36):
I think they probably would. I think there's probably a
sweet spot. Humans are all different, but I think most
humans are at their best when there's a little bit
of striving going on, when there's a little bit of
delightful struggle going on, that tends to bring out the
best in us.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
And I think.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Maybe it's not a about eliminating the possibility of that.
Maybe it's about being more able to be more targeted
with that in service of one's growth.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
On the subject of designing user experiences, do you have
a dream product in the back of your mind.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Rather than a specific dream product. There's a dream category
that I'm excited about personally and is this category of
physical AI. I you know, what are the set of
opportunities for beautiful new user experiences beyond looking at pixels
(32:39):
and leggling our fingers.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
And I very much look forward to that.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
If I look at the experiences I enjoy, if I
look at the weekend I just had, I would say
that in my top five experiences, we're all physical in nature,
that we're all about me up and about moving my
body in the world. I am really excited about new
presentation of this technology that enhances my physical experience, and
(33:07):
I think that is coming.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
You gave a Ted talk a few years ago in Glasgow,
I think, and one of your warnings was about how tech,
in its eagerness to scale, could sometimes sprint in the
wrong direction without kind of pausing to assess. You gave
that Ted talk before you worked at one of the
world's largest and most powerful tech companies. But I'm curious,
(33:30):
you know, how do you apply that thinking and that
lesson that you developed on the outside now that you're
on the inside.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, I mean, I still very much believe in that.
I interestingly was, you know, not inside one of the
largest and most powerful tech companies, but I was consulting
with many of them that the time. So I did
have a front, real seat into that dynamic. You know,
so when a platform shifts the cars in a very
(34:00):
real way, that history shows time is of the essence.
It matters to ship fast, and that can have unintended
consequences if if it's at the expense of curiosity users
curiosity about consequences. I mean, you know, I guess the
(34:24):
fact that I am in this company doing what I
do is is evidence of user curiosity, right, I mean
my answer to your question is what do you do
about it? Do you worry about it? Well, I don't
worry about it. If you're folding in like strong professional
UX practice from the get go, you know, as you
as you frame your pursuits and you build that into
(34:50):
the process of bringing the new thing into the world.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
That's that's actually.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Kind of the job of UX in the mix is
to find out what matters to people and ensure that
that is factored into the path forward for bringing the
product into existence.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Just to close, I'd love you to reflect on that
word curiosity. What's your personal philosophy on curiosity?
Speaker 2 (35:14):
My personal philosophy on curiosity, Well, in the context of AI.
You know, AI has continued to provide all of these
new affordancies for productivity and efficiency. So I think it
would be a terrible shame if all we did was
(35:39):
to turn efficiency and productivity up to living with this technology,
that would be that would be doing the technology a disservice.
I think what we need to do is to use
the fact that we can get more done more efficiently
(36:00):
to afford the ability to broaden our gaze and look
for new opportunities.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Is that what you mean by help technology be good?
Which is a phrase from your tech talk.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
It definitely.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Serves that aspiration. Every technology obviously is a double edged sword.
You know, you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck
kind of thing. And I believe that design in particular
plays a role in the mix that allows it to
inflect how that technology plays out in constructive ways. And
(36:36):
so I think that is certainly sort of a central
endeavor of the designer. I think it's if I go
back to the very beginning and talk about human machine
and soul energy, I think it's about finding virtuous ways
to express that relationship.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Their webs. To thank you so UCAL during US and
tech stuff today.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
That was fun. Nice to speak to you.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
The tech Stuff. I'm os Vloshin. This episode was produced
by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Toapia. It was executive produced
by Me, Karen Price, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Katrina nor velve Heart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode
and Kyle Murdoch rod oar theme song. Join us on
Friday for the weekend tech Karen and I will run
(37:39):
through all the headlines you may have missed, and please
do rate and review the show and reach out to
us with your feedback at tech Stuff podcast at gmail
dot com
Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story and today
I'm here with Cara Price. Hi. So we were talking
about these episodes of the story, and we realized that
while the other of us we often have an in
depth discussion about the guest or the episode, but that
we weren't capturing that discussion for the podcast and that
felt like a misopportunity. So today we're trying out something new,
(00:35):
which is to have a bit of a chat between
the two of us to intro the guests of the
week and in particular why we think their story matters
to us and to our listeners. So to start of
this week, I wanted to share a thought from our guest,
David Webster about the importance of always considering the user
when developing new technology.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
And it's often a blind spot for the technologists. I mean,
the technologists are not necessarily cold or dispersonal or or cynical.
The probably parents of this new technology, but they might
not realize that their babies their babies ugly.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So, Cara, that was David Webster speaking. He's head of
ux or User Experience, that's something called Google Labs, and
in my opinion, he has one of the most interesting
jobs at Google, because Labs is the division that's responsible
for making consumer facing products that sit on top of
Google's AI models. They've done stuff in the world of
video generation, but probably their most famous product is Notebook LM.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And that's the product that we thought was going to
put us out of business one, the one where you
can feed any websites, document articles you like, and get
back a two way podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Two comforting voices, giggling over whatever the topic at hand
may be. Much like that exactly. This notebook and AM
product kind of grew people's minds and it had fans
from Mark Cuban to AI pioneer Andre Pathy his Mark Cuban, has.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Anybody played with Notebook l LAMB the podcast feature Oh
my God.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So you could take any PDF file, any text.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
It could be like your onboarding manual.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
They could be training manual, they could be distribution manuals,
whatever it is, and you feed.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It in there and it turns it into a podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Cuban is very fixtational manuals for whatever reason he is.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
But what does Webster's role have to do with any
of this.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Well, David Webster, as I mentioned, runs Google Labs. Previously,
he worked for this design firm called Ideo, which is
famous for the concept of human centered design, in other words,
doing deep user research to understand what real people want
from our product and then integrating that feedback into the product.
Idea is actually the firm who designed the first mouse
(02:53):
for Apple in the way back when, and Webster has
now been tasked with making delightful, engaging a eye products
for Google. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
You know, it's an interesting moment for this conversation because
Google is getting absolutely beaten up, relatively speaking, by the
stock market because of questions about whether the ad supported
search engine, which is fundamental to its business, will survive
the age of AI exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
And David is on the front lines of building the
next wave of consumer products for Google. We spoke about
the philosophy behind how he does that and about his
views on the future of wearable AI. Here's the conversation.
David Webster, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Today, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
You know, when people think about Google, they obviously think
about the search engine. In fact, you know, to Google
became a verb much like to hoover, where we come from,
became a verb for vacuum cleaning in Britain. You work
at Google Labs as the head of UX, Well, what
does labs do and how does it interact with a
(03:55):
larger Google organization.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, Labs is a group that we started in twenty
twenty two. It is actually our reboot of a group
that was around her in the early days of Google,
which was a place where we could experiment with emergent
capabilities and new technologies coming from the research side of
(04:19):
the organization and figure out how to quickly productize those
in new ways and service of Google's missions. So that's
why we brought labs back into existence.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Google's mission being is that still to organize the world's information.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
I joined to stand up the UX component of labs,
and the exciting thing for me was having had a
career in design and UX UX standing of course for
user experiences. I was very aware that we were in
(05:00):
a moment where there was a host actually of unprecedentedly
powerful technologies their time had arrived, and was very conscious
of the significance of user experience and inflecting those technologies
so that the prosu weigh the cons. There were a
bunch of things emerging around twenty twenty two that were contenders.
(05:23):
You know, the blockchain was still a thing. Metaverses were
still a thing, but obviously llms their moment was arriving,
and very quickly we ascertained that they were becoming the
thing and started putting all our efforts into figuring out
how to take the potential of this, you know, significant
(05:45):
platform shift and format it so that it was accessible
and useful to people.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
You just want to sort of go back in time
thirty odd years to kind of give some framing to
this conversation into your background. I'm wonders you can tell
us who Kenji Eko one, if I'm saying that correctly,
who he is, and what we can't understand about your
work without understanding him.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Kenji Ekuan. Kenji Ekuan was absolutely legendary and iconic a
Japanese designer. He was the founder of a company called
GK Design, which is a large Japanese group of design
and creative companies, and in.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
The early days of my career.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Had the privilege of getting to meet him quite serendipetitively.
I studied mechanical engineering originally, then studied industrial design at
the Royal College of Art. Wanted to be both a
deeply technical person and a highly creative person. You had
to kind of pick either or in the UK at
the time, so I was attracted to and moved to
(06:59):
a place where where you didn't have to pick either or,
and one of those places was Japan. And so I
rolled up in Japan, but I didn't have a job
lined up, and via a friend of mine who was
already in Japan, I got an introduction to Kenji Ekuan,
who was this revered chairman of the most iconic design
firm in Japan. If you have ever used soy sauce
(07:22):
of one of those Kickoman soy sauce bottles, beautifully kind
of organically shaped one with the red lead, that's one
of Ekuan's designs.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
One of the most ubiquitous and iconic consumers there.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Is, absolutely and I found myself able to go and
meet the great man. I went into his office. I
was looking around me and it was this thing in
the corner that I couldn't help noticing, which was a
life size fiberglass human body kind of suspended in space
(07:59):
horror onto. He was two axles going through the shoulders
and the ankles, and big kind of chrome wagon wheels
on the axles. After we'd done with this sort of
introductory niceties.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
I said, I couldn't help noticing that thing. What is that?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
He just looked me in the eye and said, this
is my soul chariot and pressed the switch and the
acxules started rotating, and I was awestruck. I thought, this
guy's amazing. This is not your typical Christy senior executive.
He's talking about his soul chariot. And then we got
talking about what my aspirations were, and he looked at
(08:40):
some of my portfolio work from college and he said,
I want you to design motorcycles. And through that experience,
as I worked in his design firm design motorcycles, I
read a lot about him and learned his philosophy and
obviously had some exposure to him. And he has this
way of talking about the central endeavor of design, and
(09:00):
he calls it human machine soul energy.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That is the game, Human machine soul energy.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
That is a game, and that has stuped with me
ever since. So my career has been about the pursuit
of human machine soul energy still is.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
That's a remarkable way of putting it, and especially at
a time when I mean there's all these questions about
Emerson consciousness. There's people who are falling in love with
their ms, treating large language models as spiritual guides. I mean,
this quality of the soul when it comes to technology
is something something which for me is a kind of
(09:38):
fascinating part at the reach of my understanding of what's
going on silicon value right now. But I haven't had
a chance to ask somebody really what they mean by
it and what they think about it. So I have
to ask you right now. I mean, how how does
that phrase become newly relevant given everything we're living through
right now?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Well, it's newly relevant every time I visit, but it's
particularly relevant right now because all of a sudden, really quickly,
there's a bunch of experiences and capabilities that we're securely
on the human side of the human machine equation, and
(10:19):
now those are able to happen on the technology side.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Famously, there's a lot of anthrop of myomorphization of what.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
The lllms can do.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
People use all this language that was previously used for
humans to describe how ILM's work. You know, they say
it's thinking, and you know, the seashore between human and
machine has changed rather radically, rather suddenly, and there's a
lot of figuring out that has to happen to ensure
(10:55):
that that change nets out positively for humans.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Of what you're working on, and I want to ask
you not just what the framing of the problem is,
but what some of the initial answers are before we
get there. Though, You finish up in Japan and in
nineteen ninety seven you Silicon Valley, I believe, which is
the same year that Steve Jobs returns to Apple, and
you take a job at a firm called IDEO, which,
(11:21):
for those who don't know, I think, is kind of
a household name in this design thinking world. It was
also the company that worked with Apple I think in
the eighties to design Apple's first computer mouse. From nineteen
ninety seven to today, working at IDEO until twenty twenty two,
you witness first hand revolution after revolution in terms of
(11:44):
the way humans interact with technology. Where do you place
twenty twenty two and the consumerization of generative AI in
that journey.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
It's interesting because on the one hand, there's one way
of character, which is it's just another cycle, right, which is, Okay,
there's a technology unlock. There's a bunch of investment that happens,
and a bunch of hype that happens, and kind of
Darwinistic explosion of invention of new value that happens. All
(12:20):
of that is true, And so at some level it
feels like Web two point or or feels like the
dotcom moment. But to me it feels very different in
terms of how pervasive this technology is already and definitely
will be. But I think the fundamental character of the
(12:44):
technology makes its potential even more significant. And then for me,
the attraction to IDEO was a continuation of that through line.
You know, engineer who went to art school went to
Japan to be both technologists and create to and then
Ideal famously resolved any dichotomy there. And so IDEO's cultures
(13:09):
point of view philosophically is that it's an absolutely user
centered and just some very motivated to bring that you know,
solving for the users as a kind of fundamental approach
to this extremely significant technology moment.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah, and going back to the mission of Google Labs
that I read at the beginning, Google Labs is where you,
I guess you means the user in this case can
discover and try Google's latest AI experimental products and help
shape the future of AI technology. A very interesting in
second half of that sentence, especially because it's someone at
odds with how people think about the development of AI.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
The general model is, here's a bunch of computer scientists
who are not particularly interested in humans or even humanity
more broadly, and are willing to write it off in
favor of a you know, silicon superintelligence. But here you
are promising us as a role in the development of
the technology.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, that is absolutely the case, certainly something that I
bring from Ideal in certainly in my experience of the
engineering culture at Google, I don't think it is in
denial about the user. But what you do is you
you know, in the approach that Ideal famously used across
all of these waves of technology, it's to characterize successful
(14:40):
and innovation as being in the sort of sweet spot
between feeability, desirability, and viability. Meaning there's a three circle
diagram which is technology, human and business, and a successful
innovation has to be like the middle of that three
circle diagram. It has to matter to humans and be
(15:03):
desirable to them for some reason, and it doesn't get
to exist unless there's a business model that supports it,
and often the conditions around a new technology moment, a
new platform moment can lead to getting to that middle
of the ven diagram territory from the technology circle. So
(15:24):
a technology push that can often feel like an answer
looking for a question.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
It's like, we've.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Invented this new capability, let's figure out how to make
people want it.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
With all due respect to Mark Zuckerberg, this is the
if people are lonely, might not give them fifteen AI
friends school of thought. I don't want reach out town
so we can right.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And it's often a blind spot for the technologists. I mean,
the technologists are not necessarily cold or dispersonal or cynical,
the proud parents of this new technology, but they might
not realize that their babies, their babies ugly, you know.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
And what Ideal.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Strongly believes, what I believe and what we practice in
labs is that you have to, at the very least
also fold in the human at the earliest stage. You
have to and preferably drive it from from the user.
You have to go out there and get curious about
(16:29):
what matters to people on their terms and use that
use what you learn there as the jumping off point.
For generating new ideas about value that you can deliver
within new technology. When you go about it that way,
you're far more lightly to create experiences that users love.
(16:51):
You're more likely to create the kind of value that
you can defend over time as a company because you're
in a you're in an emotional relationship with your users,
and it generally works out a lot better. The thing
that it's often in tension with is speed, because when
a new technology appears, time is of the essence, and
(17:14):
that's very real, and so you have to achieve both.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Had when we come back the double edged sword of
technology and what happens when you innovate too quickly stay
with us. So I mean, let's anchor this in the
(17:44):
tangible world of products that you have incubated and launched
within labs.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So, Google's develop a conference was in May of this year.
I think there were four labs launches that were announced,
maybe a five. I'm not show but correctly if I'm wrong.
But take one of them and explain how it reflects
the process you've just described.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yeah, so let's take one from one of our recently
shared ones. Flow so flows the surface that lets people
interact with the capabilities of the generative video model VO three.
VO is the name of the latest video generation model
Google has, So you know, you can convey your intention
(18:30):
to this model and it will generate incredible, undiscernible from
reality videos. So VO is the model, Flow is the product.
Flow is the means of conveying that intention to the model.
As a filmmaker, so you communicate what you want the
scene to be, you communicate camera instructions, you communicate edits
(18:54):
to it, and Flow as a lab's product. Just as
an example of how that comes about. You know, from
the beginning of Flow, we worked very closely collaboratively with
movie makers. One of our fundamental principles and labs is
co create. Find out the people that you're interested in
making something for and set things up so that you
(19:18):
can actually work with them, and you're in a very
very close feedback loop about how well you're doing in
terms of delivering the kind of experience the matter to them.
So we worked with a bunch of filmmakers and developing Flow,
and it's really interesting you mentioned Notebook LM earlier, there's
another kind of co creation there. We worked with Stephen Johnson,
(19:39):
who's a best selling writer who had been obsessed for years,
for like a decade with this idea of tools for
thought and ways of collecting and formatting all of the
stuff that he you he's when writing a novel, both
(20:01):
his own previous writing has notes, his references, and figuring
out how to make it most useful.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
So he had He was like the.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Their original super user of notebook LM before notebook LM existed.
So we hired him and brought them onto the team
and co created the product with him and a lot
of the core DNA of notebook LM is what it
is because of Stephen.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
What's cool about notebook and LM is rather than just
saying to it, you know Gemini, Let's say I'm interested
in the history of the Nutcracker, and you know ballet,
you can say notebook LM. Here's you know, a great
New Yorker piece about the Nutcracker, a review of a
contemporary production at the Brooklyn Clagory of Music. And here
(20:53):
is you know, a long document about the history of dance.
I don't want to look at anything else, just these
three documents and then provide you with insights and so
in a sense, it puts you in the driver's seat
in terms of it's more like having a research assistant
than just sending out a query and seeing what happens.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
But then the kind of additional layer was and you
can hear it as a two way podcast, and that
final thing seemed to be what blue people's minds most
of all.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I mean, it wasn't entirely surprised that the blue people's
minds because we had been having our minds going by
internally before we launched it, and we knew that this
is gold. You know, this is amazing as in terms
of like delivering on the make the world's information accessible
and useful. This directly served that in a super fresh way.
(21:46):
That was super delightful. You know, a big part of
user experience designs. Don't over index on yourself as the user,
but as a user of notebook LM, the magic has
and more and not. One of the early comments and
our discard feed from actual users about it, well, somebody said,
(22:08):
it makes boring stuff interesting and I use it all
day every day to do that.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I love it to play Devil's advocate for a moment.
Some people say, well, you know, in the age of
l l m's and jernity of AI. Anything that sits
on top of a model is just a rapper. Uh,
and so labs in the wrapper business.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, I mean, like who isn't in the in the wrap?
It's like, I guess I don't really agree with the frame.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
No, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
I'm not.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Is every car brand a rapper and internal combustion? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:51):
But to be a bit more substantive about this, right,
why do I need flow? Why can't I just tell
the three really in natural language what I want to achieve?
Like why is a filmmaker? Do I need like a
product layer beyond natural language processing between me and a
video generation model?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, I mean I think you're talking to UX person.
I think it's all about that layer. It's all about
the application layer. It's all about the qualities of the
interaction experience with the underlying technology. I think we've been
in the sort of a command line era for AI
(23:31):
thus far, where it's all about kind of the user
learning this arcane language of prompts and contorting what they
want to make happen into that language to feed it
to the model. That doesn't bring me joy as a user.
I think it doesn't have to be that way. You know,
we can figure out delightful interactions for the user to
(23:56):
convery their intent to the model and for them to
work with the model. And I think it's all about that.
If you look at at how value is built and
defended by the world's most successful companies, certainly in the
consumer sector, it's about UX ya your UX. What are
the qualities of that experience and that's what builds a
(24:17):
character in the brand of a company.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
You mentioned business models yourself, right, Like where does a
flow or notebook m LM? Like how much is it
your job to monetize these new products that you're creating.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Certainly not my job to monetize them. You know.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
The way tech companies in general are configured is you've
got engineering as a discipline. You've got uxit's a discipline.
You've got product management is a discipline, and the product
managers or the or the CEOs essentially of the endeavor
typically and it's their job to take an innovation on
the trajectory from glimpse of value to users to successful product,
(25:02):
including monetization strategy, usually through phases. And so when you're
doing early stage, it's less about are you hitting a
weekly active user target and it's more about are you
seeing fire in the eyes of the users that you're
(25:24):
putting in front of them, And certainly for me, my
currency is more of the latter than the former.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You know, I'm all about helping.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
To create experiences that create that kind of response from
that induce that kind of response in users, and then
you know, pms then have something to play with to
take on the journey towards like successful products, including monetization.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
So that moment for you when the Internet and Mark
Cuban and Capathy and regular people on Reddit are going
crazy for note notebook a M, that's a moment that
that is the magic in the bottle that you spend
every day in such of essentially.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, I mean certainly in terms of outcome, the other
magic in the bottle, like the thing that really motivates
me at least as much of that is that there's
something about just the sort of thrill of the chase,
this idea of kind of before launch, when you've got
like a team, there's this sort of mutual creative euphoric
(26:31):
state you get into when you're you're pushing hard because
you know there's something that you can bring into existence
and if you set things up right with the team.
They're all kind of egging each other on. They're causing
each other to be at their creative best. And then
(26:53):
when it results in an outcome that is obviously striking
a card with users and hopefully making a difference in
the world, then that's that's greedy.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
One of the products that you guys are announced that
the Developer Conference I'd love to spend just a couple
of minutes on is Project Mariner. I mean hosting a
podcast called tech Stuff. We're constantly hearing about agents and
urgentic AI. So even I don't fully know what that means.
I think it means ais that go out in the
(27:28):
world and are able to take action on your behalf
in different fields. So I might say, like, not just hey,
Gemini would be a great itinerary for ten days in
Italy if I want to avoid the crowds in August,
but hey, Agent, I want to go to Italy for
ten days in August. Here's my budget. Please come back
(27:49):
with a fully you know, executed trip, because is that
a fair summary? And then what does Project Mariner do?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I think that's that's a you're framing as a first
summary of you know, the idea of what an agent
is product Mariners an early experiment and achieving that. So
let's create what you just described, which is an agent
that can understand your intention and go and take action
(28:19):
in service of that and primarily via browser based activities.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And what does that mean, like if I if I
use marin it, like, what will my experience be? And
your user research? How long do you think you'll take
the average user to be comfortable with aim making purchase
decisions on spending their money.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Essentially, Well, one of the things that it doesn't do
so far is make the purchases for you, right, it's
not at that point yet, but it will go through
a reasonable set of research and choice characterization and recommendation
steps that would Amuel what you would do the purchase
(29:02):
decision was still in ad theser. So so that's exactly
the kind of thing that it does. But it's not
just for purchasing. It can be for research tasks. You know,
go figure out all there is and all about this
thing that I'm interested in, do some reasoning associated with that,
(29:22):
and come back with a set of conclusions or recommendations
that helped me. And so it's those sort of things.
You can point it out at tasks and it can
go and you know, pursue those tasks on your behalf.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
David had to ask you because you know, you had
this amazing experience of going to Japan as a young man,
you know, meeting one of your idols and then going
out and being assigned the task of you know, design
for motorcycles. Right, part of what you had to do
in that process, I assume was study other motorcycles, meet
(30:02):
motorcycle riders, essentially develop the playbook that you refined at
IDEO and then are executing on now at Google Labs.
Do you worry about a future in which the products
like Mariner, the agentic products get so good that there
is no incentive for humans to go into the world
(30:26):
and develop their own skills and vision by grinding through
tasks that could be automated. But that it was to
our benefit that they were not automated, because it allowed
us to become the people and thinkers and doers that
we are today. I mean, how do you how do
you grapple with that?
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Acknowledge it as a reasonable question. I personally, I don't
worry too much about it because It's funny, I you
know career working in design, it's often to those who
aren't in it, it can seem like the answer to
good design is remove friction, right, and hey, if you
(31:12):
just if you just remove friction, then it's a great
design solution. I think there's a little bit more to
it than that, you know. To answer your question about
my career and all of the struggle and toil the
resulted then hard lessons learned? Do I think those same
lessons would have been learned with some help with that toil,
(31:36):
I think they probably would. I think there's probably a
sweet spot. Humans are all different, but I think most
humans are at their best when there's a little bit
of striving going on, when there's a little bit of
delightful struggle going on, that tends to bring out the
best in us.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
And I think.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Maybe it's not a about eliminating the possibility of that.
Maybe it's about being more able to be more targeted
with that in service of one's growth.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
On the subject of designing user experiences, do you have
a dream product in the back of your mind.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Rather than a specific dream product. There's a dream category
that I'm excited about personally and is this category of
physical AI. I you know, what are the set of
opportunities for beautiful new user experiences beyond looking at pixels
(32:39):
and leggling our fingers.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
And I very much look forward to that.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
If I look at the experiences I enjoy, if I
look at the weekend I just had, I would say
that in my top five experiences, we're all physical in nature,
that we're all about me up and about moving my
body in the world. I am really excited about new
presentation of this technology that enhances my physical experience, and
(33:07):
I think that is coming.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
You gave a Ted talk a few years ago in Glasgow,
I think, and one of your warnings was about how tech,
in its eagerness to scale, could sometimes sprint in the
wrong direction without kind of pausing to assess. You gave
that Ted talk before you worked at one of the
world's largest and most powerful tech companies. But I'm curious,
(33:30):
you know, how do you apply that thinking and that
lesson that you developed on the outside now that you're
on the inside.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, I mean, I still very much believe in that.
I interestingly was, you know, not inside one of the
largest and most powerful tech companies, but I was consulting
with many of them that the time. So I did
have a front, real seat into that dynamic. You know,
so when a platform shifts the cars in a very
(34:00):
real way, that history shows time is of the essence.
It matters to ship fast, and that can have unintended
consequences if if it's at the expense of curiosity users
curiosity about consequences. I mean, you know, I guess the
(34:24):
fact that I am in this company doing what I
do is is evidence of user curiosity, right, I mean
my answer to your question is what do you do
about it? Do you worry about it? Well, I don't
worry about it. If you're folding in like strong professional
UX practice from the get go, you know, as you
as you frame your pursuits and you build that into
(34:50):
the process of bringing the new thing into the world.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
That's that's actually.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Kind of the job of UX in the mix is
to find out what matters to people and ensure that
that is factored into the path forward for bringing the
product into existence.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Just to close, I'd love you to reflect on that
word curiosity. What's your personal philosophy on curiosity?
Speaker 2 (35:14):
My personal philosophy on curiosity, Well, in the context of AI.
You know, AI has continued to provide all of these
new affordancies for productivity and efficiency. So I think it
would be a terrible shame if all we did was
(35:39):
to turn efficiency and productivity up to living with this technology,
that would be that would be doing the technology a disservice.
I think what we need to do is to use
the fact that we can get more done more efficiently
(36:00):
to afford the ability to broaden our gaze and look
for new opportunities.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Is that what you mean by help technology be good?
Which is a phrase from your tech talk.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
It definitely.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Serves that aspiration. Every technology obviously is a double edged sword.
You know, you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck
kind of thing. And I believe that design in particular
plays a role in the mix that allows it to
inflect how that technology plays out in constructive ways. And
(36:36):
so I think that is certainly sort of a central
endeavor of the designer. I think it's if I go
back to the very beginning and talk about human machine
and soul energy, I think it's about finding virtuous ways
to express that relationship.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Their webs. To thank you so UCAL during US and
tech stuff today.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
That was fun. Nice to speak to you.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
The tech Stuff. I'm os Vloshin. This episode was produced
by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Toapia. It was executive produced
by Me, Karen Price, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Katrina nor velve Heart Podcasts. Jack Insley mixed this episode
and Kyle Murdoch rod oar theme song. Join us on
Friday for the weekend tech Karen and I will run
(37:39):
through all the headlines you may have missed, and please
do rate and review the show and reach out to
us with your feedback at tech Stuff podcast at gmail
dot com
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