It’s all about the way it interacts, says Johna Paolino.
Have you ever thought about the fact that there are bigger implications to how you personally interact with your devices? Johna Paolino certainly thinks about it, and thus, has thanked Google in a Medium post for “paying closer attention…to the female users.”
Paolino writes that Google Home is the first major at-home gadget that she’s taken a liking to. A user experience designer at TODO, she attributes it to the fact that Google Home is the complete package: a well-named product that requires an element of conversation.
Paolino writes:
I’ve learned throughout my career that the most significant UX performance gains often come down to microcopy. This could not be more true here. Amazon is the name of a pioneering e-commerce platform and revolutionary cloud computing company. Echo is its product name, first to market of its kind. Alexa? Alexa is just the name of a female that performs personal tasks for you in your home.
Google Home, on the other hand, “is simply triggered with ‘Google’. Google, a multinational, first-of-its-kind technology company. Suddenly a female’s voice represents a lot more.”
Paolino continues by explaining that Google Home’s conversational nature, by extension, is more accessible.
The advancement of feminism requires awareness from both genders. It isn’t isolated to how men treat women, but extends to how women treat each other. I am constantly making an effort to change my behaviors towards other women, and in this effort certainly prefer how I am asked to greet Google.
As a Google Home adopter myself, I have to agree. I love Home’s conversational nature, and the fact that I can program it to talk back to me. And while Alexa is seeing quite a bit of proliferation, that’s because it exists to extend Amazon’s services rather than appeal to the user. “The smallest of user experience details matter.”
That’s why Paolino’s believes Google Home is a more personal platform.
