Google's Minor UI Update Is Solving The Biggest
Problem On Smartphones Right Now
BY PREDICTING WHAT YOU
WANT TO DO NEXT IN ANY APP, NOW ON TAP IS A SMALL UPDATE THAT COULD BECOME A
VERY BIG DEAL.
With its upcoming
Android M operating system, Google revealed a major UI breakthrough for
smartphones. It’s called Now
on Tap. An extension of
Google Now, you simply tap and hold the Home button inside any Android app, and
a card appears on the bottom of your screen suggesting a number of apps that
can help carry out the next thing Google thinks you want to do on your phone.
So say you’re texting
a friend about seeing The Avengers 2. Tap home, and a card with the
movie will pop up, with links to reviews on IMDb, trailers on YouTube, and a
way to purchase tickets like the Fandango app. Google has predicted a small
handful of places you might want to go, and offered instantaneous bridges to
get there.
Maybe this seems like
a minor update, but in a broader sense, Now on Tap is attempting to solve the
biggest problem on smartphones right now. Our million+ apps, once so useful,
have trapped us inside a million+ boxes, each with very limited functions. So
you’re messaging. Or you’re yelping. Or you’re googling. When you’re inside one
app, how do you get to another app? If you're in Google maps and you've found
the movie theater you're looking for, how do check what movies are
playing and book a ticket and check out
restaurants in the area? It's a nightmare of swiping back and forth between
apps, while all the while trying to remember what you were trying to do in the
first place. It's annoying.
So far, designers have
already responded to this problem in two ways: First, the mega popular
messaging apps like WhatsApp have begun to absorb more and more functions.
They’ve become alpha apps, if you will, containing their own little cities of talking,
searching, shopping, and mapping in a tightly integrated bundle. But it's hard
to imagine this scaling very well, as the world of apps and services only
continues to swell.
Meanwhile, Facebook,
Google, and to a lesser extent, Apple, have to implemented a technology called "deep
linking" or "app links," which allow you to tap on a link and go
straight into the relevant section of an app. The philosophy behind app links is that you’ll surf your
phone much like you surf the web. But app links come with a major limitation: A
developer has to program an app with your destination already in mind. It has
to foresee the future for all sorts of different people using its app, and play
to the lowest common denominator. Sure, it makes sense that Google now links to
Uber directly from Google Maps. But what about the dozens of other things you
might want to do directly from Google Maps, such as make a date with a friend
or make a reservation at an restaurant? You can't very well add a half-dozen
links to any already crowded UI. This too is a system that can't scale with the
ever-expanding universe on our phones.
Enter Google with Now
on Tap. It combines the convenient interaction of app links with the remarkably
good artificial intelligence of Google Now—that supermind that can already suggest a route to a nearby
Wendy’s because it knows you’re hungry and knows you love Frosties, or pull up
your flight reservation because it spied your Travelocity reservation in Gmail.
Now on Tap relies on
an even larger universe of information, in the form of an even powerful version
of Google Now. It used to be that Google Now could only mine information from
other Gmail services, but Google has now opened up the Now API, so that Google
Now can parse data from over 100 other apps, mining for actionable connections.
Thus, much like Google can predict your search before you finish typing it, Now
on Tap will predict your next multitask before you multitask it. And in doing
so, it condenses anywhere you want to go on your phone next to the simplest of
UI elements: A single button. One press could bring up any one of dozens of
services that you might need in the moment. Any app that's been linked up to
Google Now is fair game.
One day, perhaps it
might help you discover services you aren't using but seem to
need—thus solving the problem of app discovery, which has proven to be a severe
bottleneck on the number of apps people use. Facebook already makes a ton of
money advertising apps; imagine what Google could do, if its app advertisements
were both highly contextual and immediately useful. The point is, whatever
Google does do, it has quickly introduced what could become a powerful new
paradigm in mobile computing—one that ties to its overriding goal of reducing
user friction by answering questions before they've even
asked.
But the big caveat is
that Now on Tap will only become second-nature for users if it consistently
spits out something useful. The service has to reliably steer people to the
right place—otherwise, trust in the recommendations will wane and the service
will become an afterthought. If Google fails in this endeavor, if it points you
to a movie when you planned to see a play, or a fast food restaurant when
you’re on a diet, then Now on Tap is no longer a trusty, personal assistant.
It’s a dumb, nosy computer that’s getting in the way.
To be fair, Google Now
has already been pretty successful at fortune-telling your needs. For many, it
has become Android's killer app. But the complexity of mining information
across just a few Google Apps is a far cry from trying to sort through dozens
of competing apps, each of which might be the one you need.
How often can Google be wrong before you decide that your own app-hopping is
faster? I don’t know the answer to that. But soon enough, Google sure will.
Co-written by Cliff
Kuang.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046887/googles-biggest-i-o-announcement-will-fix-a-major-problem-with-smartphone-apps?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-weekly-newsletter&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=06052
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