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I'll tell people I work at Google now

what do you work on a design surgeon

they kind of pause for a second

what is there to design

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just watch

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you

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oh I know it's cat

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hi how can I help

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hello everybody I'm Brenda Fogg I work

in the creative lab which is a sort of a

multidisciplinary creative group within

Google that often collaborates with

other teams across the company on

product or technology experiments and

sometimes finding new ways to talk about

some of the innovative work that's going

on inside of Google and at some point

over the years I've worked with each of

our panelists on some of those projects

that you probably saw on the video just

now so we're gonna talk a little bit

about some things that you may have seen

a little bit about design at Google and

what that means as a sort of a

fundamental framework and connective

tissue between the things that Google

makes and making them as useful and

accessible to as many people as possible

so let's start with some introductions

we have Doug X right here to my left who

leads a project called magenta which is

all about exploring machine learning and

creativity

we have Isabel Olson who's responsible

for the design of the Google home and

wearables and hardware and over there is

Ryan gormak principal designer who also

is known as the doodle guy and has been

quite involved in the Google assistant

and generally just in the business of

delighting users everywhere so let's

let's start by letting everybody to talk

a little bit about what you do at Google

and we'll start with Doug history

sitting next to me you head up this

project called magenta for anybody who

doesn't know exactly what that is maybe

you can talk a little bit about that and

maybe touch on what inspired the the

group and the focus of the team okay

sure so yeah I lead a project called

magenta the MA G and magenta stands for

music and art generation

we started by trying to understand the

capacity to use a I specifically machine

learning to generate music in art and it

took us about a month to realize that

that's asking the wrong question because

if all you're doing is trying to

generate music and art then you just

keep pushing this button and the machine

learning keeps making music and art for

you and you know it gets boring fast so

we pivoted very quickly to talking about

how can we use machine learning to

enable artists and enable musicians to

make something new to make something

different so it's it's sitting on the

same idea of Technology and art

interacting with one another in a

virtuous way starting you know with cave

drawings I'm moving forward through the

film camera and other bits of technology

and so yeah I'm the about AI and art and

music so you're not necessarily trying

to replace creativity or duplicate

creativity but more providing the tools

to enable people to do that yeah and I

think I think it's not just because

that's what we choose to focus on I

think creativity is fundamentally human

and it's about communication so if we

take the communication loop out we can

imagine in some analytical way a

computer generating new things but what

makes creativity work is how we respond

to it and how we then feed back into

that process so I think it's very much a

societal societal communicative act and

that idea of creating new things like

maybe some things that weren't

necessarily possible before that like

weren't humanly possible to create so

there's a examine if you want to talk

about this with this example of that was

shown in the in the lead up in the

keynote yesterday the Innocence Project

which is one of those things that can

sort of augment what human creativity

can do you want to touch on that yeah

sure so for the n synth and the

following the hardware device and since

super you may have seen was played on

stage before the keynote and discussed

there I think the main idea there is can

we use machine learning to allow us to

generate new sounds and sounds that are

musically meaningful to us and one thing

to point out is that you know we already

have ways to do that right

a bunch of great software we also like I

have a piano at my house so I can have a

guitar there lots of ways to make sounds

what we hope we can get is some kind of

expressive edge with AI something that

we can do with these models a kind of

intuitive Nisour a kind of new kind of

mobility artistically by having a new

tool and the one thing I would say I

don't want to take up too much time

because you know there's a lot of other

great people here on stage but I really

like to think about the film camera the

film camera was initially not treated as

an artistic device it was treated as

something to capture reality and it was

transformed into an artistic device by

artists by photographers and our hope on

magenta is that we find the right

artists and the right musicians to take

what we're doing and turn it into

something creative so turning something

into creative as Abell when you're

designing a product the home for example

you're trying to create something that

appeals to everyone through its design

but everybody's different right so

there's you know these are physical

products that share a physical space

with the people that use them and like

some sometimes you have to cohabitate so

talk a little bit about how you approach

that problem yeah I mean I think I have

the utmost respect for four people's

homes and like you said there they're

all different and I think next to your

body your home is your most intimate

space and it's the place where you share

with your loved ones and your family so

to enter that space with with our

products we have to be super thoughtful

about what we do there and I think for

us the most important thing is to be

inspired by the context in which our

products live in so when we were

designing Google home Mini for example

the the goal was to design an assistant

for every room and that means your

bedside table and your bedside table

that's where you put devices that help

you see better or like a book that helps

you dream so that space is just so

special we wanted to create something

that that was beautiful that fit into

the home

and didn't take up too much attention

and kind of faded in a little bit into

the background and you're also

responsible for cmf at Google which is

color material finish right yes

and I've heard this I've heard this

story about testing like a hundred and

fifty different versions color palettes

for the mini is that is that right yeah

I mean I think for us the developing the

color palette for for the Google family

of products and individual products is

very it's a combination of art and

science I would say and we start usually

two to three years before the products

come out so we have to do a lot of

anticipation of where society's going

where trends are going and take all of

those kind of inputs into account to

make sure that we want to release a

product it makes sense to people in

addition to that of course when you

design for the home you have to think

about the fact that you know there's

going to be light hitting the product

how does it stand the test of time we

want to make sure the products are

beautiful for you know for a long time

so we have to go through a lot of

iteration to get it right and then also

especially as we're developing fabrics

for example depending on where you put

it it takes different it looks different

in different lighting conditions so when

we when we design mini we went through I

think hundred and fifty iterations of

just the gray collar so but it was a lot

of fun and and it was about finding that

right balance with what is too light

what's too dark and the other day I got

this lovely email by someone on the team

who had picked out his couch to match

Google home max so I took that it as a

giant compliment because we were trying

to do the other way around but but that

was that was a beautiful story

how much

what is the intersection of the

intuition that you use as a designer

when you approach these kinds of

problems with the sort of iterative

testing and and sort of the scientific

materials examination yeah it's a

hodgepodge and it's the process is not

linear it's pretty messy usually but we

have fun with it I think I think the key

is gather as much input as possible and

then digested and then come up with

prototypes and way of ways of relating

to how this will fit into people's homes

so even right next to my desk I have a

big bookshelf that we plays random

objects from all over the world for

inspiration but also to kind of put our

stuff there quickly to see how does it

feel and how does it feel over time

because it's not only about creating

something that you are first attracted

to but it has to be things that you can

live with for a long time so Ryan you

lead the Google Doodles team and this

team is unique in a lot of ways namely

one of them is that you regularly and

willfully break the brand rules Glee

gleefully for for Google in fact on a

daily basis many many times and that's

unusual because it's you know it's the

core of the brand and that's something

that that seems to keep working and

working and working over the years so

talk a little bit about why that's you

know why you think it's important to

have the ability to kind of just mess

with it I'm sure I mean googles mission

is to organize the world's information

and make it universally accessible and

useful and I believe in that mission I

think it's a very powerful good thing to

do for the world and we hone in on the

idea of making things accessible by

creating a an emotional connection with

users and sometimes like mucking up the

standards if that's like collateral

damage for people getting a positive

charge and learning something new or

having fun with something then we think

it's worthwhile and yeah I think on a

human level there's things that are more

important to

you know then consistency and it's for

us more about you know using our

creativity and craft to make people feel

welcome in the space of Technology yeah

so making people feel welcome in the

space of technology you also lead the

team who created the the personality for

the Google assistant and like how do you

create a personality I mean that you

know there's sort of the the

transactional things that have to happen

between a user when they're interacting

with an assist a digital assistant and

they have an expectation that they're

gonna be delivered information that they

asked for and you felt like I needed to

go a little bit farther than that sort

of transactional relationship but people

have you know a little bit the way we

were talking with with Isabella you know

everyone has sort of different things

that they like to interact with and some

people like small talk and some people

don't and some people think things are

funny that other people think are

totally not funny at all so how did you

talk a little about that yeah I mean I I

think that as Isabelle mentioned the

technology like the assistant that comes

in a smart speaker or a smart display or

in your phone is really personal that's

one thing and so we just recognize that

we have a different set of design

challenges than if it was like more like

objective like a Google search engine

might be seen and then also you know

when you invite this technology into

your life with you know we're using this

conversational interface as I metaphor

you can talk to it and it can respond to

you and as soon as you hear the human

voice it not only opens up an

opportunity to have a character but you

know what we've seen it's almost like an

obligation to design for the character

because if you don't design for that

people will just assume you're you don't

you don't have much of a character but

there's still some implicit character so

we took the learnings that we had from

doodles and being you know an implicit

character for Google where we accelerate

certain things and we get creative and

nerdy and excited and we try to transfer

that over to the Google assistant where

it could be like a character that you'd

want to spend time with because it has

you know things that gets excited about

or it's you know has a perspective or

really wants to help you and

not just be something that you want to

use but something that you want to spend

time with so so yes a prizing number of

the principles and things that we did

for doodles were applicable for the

Google assistant and it's a huge project

and there's a lot of a lot of pieces of

the puzzle but we think it's an

important part of the user experience to

have a sense of who the character is

yeah so each of you talked a little bit

about how technology interacts with

humans and vice-versa and how those two

things have to kind of coexist so good

design and thoughtful design is is a

means to make technology in this case

more approachable and and useful and

usable and friendly and and to make

people comfortable with that and you all

approach your your work and

problem-solving in this way from a very

human perspective right oh very like you

would inject empathy we're gonna get

real and talk about like humanity and

empathy right injecting this empathy

into into your process so let's talk

about that it's a Doug do you think can

can the work you do with machine

learning allow a machine to express art

in a in a human way yeah let's start

there yes with some with some

constraints on how this all works I

think what what we realized early was

that we need at least two players in

this game so to speak part of the work

is building new technology so in some

sense we're taking on the role that a

luthier might take on and building a

guitar or that someone doing a music

tech program might take on and building

a new kind of electronic instrument and

and I think there's there's a thought

process that goes with building

something like that that is very

creative but I think you're also in some

very real way constrained by the act of

building the thing to understand it in a

certain way like it's your baby you

built it and so you know you wrote the

operating manual so you know what this

thing is supposed to do

and in most cases what we see is that

for something to become a truly

expressive artistic device it has to in

some very real way be broken by someone

else and I think it's almost impossible

for us as the builders of that device to

also be the ones that break it and so

our dream in magenta is to connect with

artists and musicians and people people

that don't know how to code people that

don't necessarily even care much about

computation and draw them into this

conversation and so what we found is

that you know we started by releasing

machine learning models in open source

on github as part of tensorflow

with instructions like please run this

15 line long Python command it's gonna

be great just run this command and hit

Lanter and then just wait because you're

gonna get a hundred MIDI files in a temp

directory somewhere on your machine

right everybody's like that's not how I

make music so what we've seen is that

part of our work even even on the

technologists side even as luthiers so

to speak guitar makers part of our job

is to do good design and to build

interfaces that people can use and then

hopefully the interfaces are flexible

enough and expressive enough that in

some very meaningful way people can also

do some fun breakage and getting there

requires a lot of moving parts a large

component of which is very good design I

like that that notion of breaking things

you told a story once about or you made

an analogy once about the electric

guitar I think and how that's a little

bit similar right like the the

dissonance that people create with with

electric guitars is not yeah that's

that's right so first I I tell the same

stories I'm like you know like grandpa

you know no but it's true that you know

the electric guitar was invented to be a

loud acoustic guitar to overcome noise

on stage and the worst you know they

were trying really hard to not have

these amplifiers to store it right so

imagine a world where amplifiers don't

distort and electric guitars sound like

acoustic guitars you actually haven't

moved very far and the breakage there

was actually having fun

with the distortion and actually going

for sounds that aren't like an acoustic

guitar let's go back to Isabel

one of the things I think it's so

interesting about your work and that

that people have to cohabitate with

these physical things is that it's it's

just as important or maybe more

important how people feel about these

things rather than just what their

utility is how do you what kind of

considerations do you make for this

we're starting to sound like hippies now

but like what people's feelings in there

and their empathise and their you know

the way they coexist in the space with

these things I think a good tool that I

use a lot is that I put stuff in front

of people and ask them what do you think

it looks like it's a fun game you don't

always get back what you want to hear

but it's a really good way of testing if

what the object you've created does it

have positive connotations or negative

connotations the first time I showed a

prototype of mini I showed it to a

French person who's like a Mac at home

and I thought that was amazing because

first of all I love Mike Evans and then

I think you know having something

connotates something sweet and delicious

is just excellent and again you know we

surround ourselves with food you know

that was that was just I knew we were on

to something there

and and food is something universally

appealing definitely so so that's one

exercise out of out of many I think I

think the key is just to really make the

thing real really quickly to translate

the big idea into something tangible and

then ourselves living with it for a

while too and then also think about you

know not only the food analogies but

also making sure that the objects we

design are understandable you understand

what it is so again with many we wanted

to look a little bit like a speaker and

a little bit like a microphone but not

too much of either

be very honest to that function and then

connotated that this goes in the home

and therefore you know the fabrics and

the things that were used to surround

ourselves with yeah it has to have that

human touch to it part of the design

process and the the beauty of it is when

you find these solutions a lot of the

times they enhance the function or help

with the function like fabric is this

excellent material that is you know most

of the time audio transparent you can

have lights through it you can kind of

create this calmness in the object

itself by getting all the functionality

through it and I'm really passionate

about trying to design pieces of

technology which hopefully people think

about they're just stuff and not as

technology but that can live out in the

open there's just way too many pieces of

furniture that are purely designed to

hide technology so my goal in life is if

we can get rid of those things and Ryan

you the that sort of human touch is

pretty evident in most everything that

you do so we can talk about the the

Google assistant again it was designed

to operate and to be used through the

power of conversation which is a

fundamental human interface I guess and

through the course of your work on on

creating a personality talk a little bit

about how you found you know how you

sort of steered through the landmines of

what kinds of aside from the

transactional things what kinds of

things are people going to want to talk

about with their assistant yeah I mean I

think um this may be a bit cliche but

it's like so early days so I think we're

still steering but for us a guiding

principle for our success is you know

does it does it is a feeling thing like

does this feel like some a character

that you want to spend time with like I

mentioned earlier as far as like finding

things that people we wanted to steer

clear of I mean it was really

interesting to look at the different

queries that people ask Google search

and that we

we'll ask Google assistant and at Google

as you might imagine there's a lot of

people that have a background in like

information retrieval and like data

ranking and things like search ranking

things I thought and they kind of turn

things on their head when now people are

asking questions like you know what's

your favorite flavor of ice cream or

like you know did you fart and those are

like pretty more common than you think

when people get first get a piece of

technology that's been lovingly crafted

they also have a very different

relationship to it a very sizable number

of the queries that we get on the Google

assistant are like the first date

queries like do you have any brothers or

sisters it's really sweet right what

you're the only person that can it what

is her favorite flavor of ice cream I'm

sure everybody wants to know this is a

very illuminating question thank you for

asking so basically we we have a

principle you know and this is big

Sabrina's question too like we basically

set up principles where we for example

we have one principle that we want to

talk like a human we want to take

advantage of the human voice and the

interface but we don't want to pretend

to be one so if you were to ask a

question like what's your favorite

flavor of ice cream we would do what we

would call an artful Dodge and we look

to our training and improv theatre where

we don't want to deny the user of like

you know I do not eat ice cream I do not

have a mouth

let's take a really bummer answer if

you're like exploring a new technology

you know that's a shutdown to the

conversation so we would but at the same

time we don't want to lie and say like

well you know salted caramel obviously

which this is like you know a position

that is disingenuous because it does not

eat ice cream so we would say something

like you can't go wrong with Neapolitan

there's something in it for everyone and

we would take that question understand

that the subtext is like I'm getting to

know what you are and what your

capabilities are and we would yes and

and we would kind of continue to play

the game and use it actually as an

opportunity to make a value statement

that we're inclusive and we want

everybody to you know you know we want

to reflect that ice cream that is good

for everyone is good hmm

how much how much dialogue goes on when

you're within your team when you're

trying to you know and when you're

talking about okay what if someone asks

the Google assistant do you fart yet

well that that was actually that as soon

as that question I knew was going to be

answered and it wasn't just gonna

default to an answer I knew that we

already won like the humanists amongst

us already won because there was a kid

school of thought that you would say I

don't fart I don't have a body and that

was like and his story and that just

seems just true but kind of not in line

with you know you know keeping the

keeping the game going so we would have

a lot of back-and-forth and we would

then like take that answer and we'd say

well at least you could say I don't have

a but because at least your that you're

being a little more specific yeah but

but in our case we ended up with

something a little more playful it a

little more addressing the subtext which

is at the school of like whoever smelt

it dealt it which we said you can blame

me if you want I don't mind and we kind

of is I kind of you know the if the

users asking about that you know let's

just take a little step further and put

them on the spot are you all gonna go

ask I think there's like 25 different

answers that I keep asking okay so let's

let's talk a little bit about how all of

this Humanity plays out in the context

of a brand like Google so Isabel the the

home mini you mentioned needed to be

both a speaker and a microphone as well

as an assistant and behave like an

assistant how do you give so if you're

starting from those kind of very

engineering kind of product requirements

how do you go from there into the idea

of personality of a brand in Ryan's case

his his work talks right it's the

personality comes through that way

in your work it comes through sort of

the materials and the things how do you

consider the personality of the Google

brand and the work that you do yeah I

mean I think it's a huge responsibility

and we're only a few years into to

making hardware that people actually put

down money for and you know the brand is

just really incredible but um and so

we're trying to figure out like what's

core to Google and how do we transfer

that into physical form and some of the

sometimes it's not about like a direct

translation because most people you know

don't want to pay money for something

quirky maybe so taking that kind of

principle and that idea and then

thinking about what it means for

hardwear's and so in this case for

example to me Google stands for sense of

optimism and kind of this optimistic

outlook on the future so if I can do

things that remind people of that or

that makes people smile I think that

that naturally then feels like a Google

product so just one simple example of

that so you turn mini it upside down

there is a pop of color on the back and

only you as a person who bought the

product know that but you know it's kind

of has that Google on the inside yeah

yeah that let's let's go back to Ryan

then because over the years so for the

seven or eight years or whatever however

many years you've been twelve twelve

twelve twelve years you've had a lot of

opportunities to craft those sort of

moments of delight and then those sort

of little user experiences that that are

like turning over the mini and finding

like a little surprise so everything

from you you're responsible for the the

Pegman which is a little the little

character that you drop into Google Maps

when you go into Street View and we

talked about the personality of the

Google assistant a little bit and then

of course the doodles taking over the

homepage so over the 12 years that

you've been kind of working in that

territory and as the Google brand has

grown and evolved have you found how is

that growth of the brand impacted the

work that you do I think the the kind of

core of what I try to do I almost have

discovered it by accident like the

Street View Pegman maybe it's a story

for another day but but I was just glad

that I worked in a place that had free

strawberries when I got here that was

very exciting to me and then that they

paid me to draw and be creative was just

like beyond my wildest dream so I'm just

like happy to be here it's still unhappy

to be here but what what kind of worked

for me because it was always sort of my

mo was how can I use my position of

privilege to bring other people

and to give them a sense of belonging

and that that stayed consistent so you

know whether it's like trying to make

sure we have inclusive doodles or you

know creating an opportunity for a

little like mannequin that can be

dressed up for holidays or whatever for

a street view it's you know there's been

a through-line where maybe in the

beginning Google was more of an underdog

and now Google's like you know very

important part of people's lives I don't

think you could really say it's a small

organization by any stretch but there

are still human touch points that matter

to make people feel like they belong

which is what Google's trying to do for

everyone I want to make sure we leave

time for questions if anybody has them

so if you have questions we'd start

coming to the microphones while we kind

of go a little bit into the future let's

talk about the future so if we're

sitting here a year from now or a few

years from now Doug what do you expect

that what do you expect that machine

learning might do for art in the future

whether it's you know your aspirations

for the next 12 or 18 months or maybe

five years from now so I think the the

really interesting way to think about

this is consider generative models as a

family of machine learning models models

that generate new instances of the of

the data upon which they're trained

where ICS going is actually very heavily

integrating the design process of

products with generative models so that

the we're seeing machine learning

generating part of what we're trying to

do and I think that's gonna touch our

lives in the arts and music and

communication in a number of ways and to

those of you who or anybody in the room

of developer it's an easy question he

says we're at a developer conference

right so we're gonna have a

responsibility as machine learning

experts to understand a little bit about

design a responsibility as back-end

engineers to understand a little bit

about machine learning in design like I

think we're gonna see much more of a

need for end-to-end integration for me

the future started happening already in

a sense I have teenage kids and I

watched just how they use snapchat to

communicate and how they've built their

own kind of grammar around it and it's a

very very simple product

now imagine

ten years of advances in assistive

writing so you know you're using Google

Docs and you're writing and you have

some machine learning algorithm helping

you communicate right we're going to get

very good at this very fast and I expect

that you know when my kids were younger

the teachers were all worried if they

used Wikipedia too much to write their

papers and now it's gonna be like wait

how much how much of this did you

actually write like like what part of it

did you write and what part of it did

your assistant right and I think you

know we can be dystopian about that

there are potentially some very

difficult issues here but it's also

wonderful I think you know as long as we

use this to communicate more effectively

and in different ways and we make it

into something creative I think it's

it's very exciting to think about how

machine learning can become really more

deeply integrated in in the process of

communicating and again that's that's

what I see the arts as being about and

music being about it's about

communicating it's about sharing our

thoughts our feelings our beliefs with

each other and I'm seeing in my career

that happening more deeply with machine

learning as well so that's my future

vision I love it I love your vision is

about what about hardware where do you

what do you want to see in hardware in

the next year or two well number one I

hope people find out about it

so we just did a small exhibition in

Milan a couple of a couple weeks ago and

part of the exhibition was the portfolio

that we launched last year a lot of

people would come up to me and these

concepts are great and I'm like they're

not concepts they're actual product so

so I think it's a little bit of that and

then I hope we we just continue to

design for everyone in everyday life

yeah

and Ryan what would you like to what

would you say what would you like people

to take away today I think just remember

that technology is for people first and

foremost so just always keep you know

that question in the back your mind of

like how and what I house what I'm doing

helping people okay let's do we have

questions

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