With the rise of AI-powered assistants, how would you improve Google Assistant to stay competitive?

• Improvement Goal ?

  • Keeping market share of Google assistant and increasing engagement

• Constraints ?

  • No

Mission, Goal

Google: To organize world information and present it in universally accessible way

Goal: Engagement

User Segments (TAM, Engagement potential)

Power users (M, H) (As they are already engaged with the assitant so they will appreciate whatever changes we will make to improve assistant)

Casual users (M-H, M-H)

Occasional users (H, M)

Pain points

• Contextual awareness is missing

• Personalization voice and emotional touch is missing

• Not able to understand sarcasm, interruptions etc

• Language and dialect understanding

Solutions (I, E)

• Short memory and long term personalization: So if someone has asked ‘How's the weather today’ and then ask ‘what about tomorrow’ then the assistant should know that they are talking about weather. And if someday in the future they again ask for weather, we can take a look at how we answer last and maybe add a context of it.

• Modulation of voice depending on situations: Happy voice in morning, sensitive voice when asking serious questions. 

• Proactive conversations: ‘Are you fine’ if sensed tension to give more human touch

Metrics & Trade Offs

• AI can make mistakes: Need constant feedback

• Can breach boundaries: Balancing between providing human touch and breaching privacy

Engagement

• Avg. no of times using Google Assistant/week

• Avg. followup questions on a chat/week

• DAU/WAU (Active: Asking a query)

• #conversations where assistant changing modulations

• Avg. length of those conversations

Satisfaction

• CSAT or internal survey form

• NPS