Google Now feed update: Interaction design deeply rooted with ML ground truth!!
Google has updated Google Now feed, the place where you can now read all your interests and day’s tasks. But this update also remove the ability to swipe each card.
What puzzles me is that the vast majority of reviews only analyze this feature update from one perspective: Look&Feel and interaction design. But, what about how to improve the service? (or improve the machine learning algorithm?) What about the type and quality info that Google get? (Main source of revenue)
Here you have a couple of examples:
“The latest major redesign of the Google Now feed caused an essential user-favorite feature to get snubbed in favor of a more appealing aesthetic for the feed. Yes, the new looks of the informative feed look great, but they no longer allow you to swipe and dismiss the cards of all the stories you’re no longer interested in. You still can dismiss stories, but this involves interacting with a dreaded three-dot menu…”
Another review about it
“Google killed off the ability to swipe away some cards when in the feed on the Google App. You see, from the beginning, if Google showed you a card in the Feed, you could swipe it left or right to dismiss it as if you were done with its contents. With this latest change, you have to tap the menu of each card before telling Google that you are “Done with this story,” that you aren’t interested in its contents or source, that you want to share it or it may be a topic to follow going forward, etc. It’s actually pretty inconvenient! I’ll even admit that it was a poor move by Google. Swiping cards away has become a natural move to dismiss items in the Google App’s Feed. Now, you have to tap a small menu button before finding the action you want to take. What’s up with that Google? Well, according to a Googler, it was done on purpose.”
Personally, I didn’t use the swipe function very much (too many cards to swipe off), I would prefer Google update each card once the card is open/read (even identify the same piece of news from different media in order to show just once)
So what? My bet:
Google want to force the users to express in a more granular way why they want to discard each card to have better ground truth to improve the service (ML algorithm). Now, If you want to discard some content, you need to press the three dot menu and select from:
- Share
- Done with this story
- Not interested in the topic
- Not interested in the media/publication that write about the topic
- Customize story
- Send feedback
So, before the update, Swipe discard the card and it could mean:
- Done with this story
- Not interested in the topic
- Not interested in the media/publication that write about the topic
Google needs to know why you swipe the card in order to feed the algorithm!
As you can see, interaction design is deeply rooted to machine learning algorithms, because it is the main source of ground truth.
Bonus track: the new Look&Feel highlights the topic in the top left corner in the same approach. Google wants to let you know why the service shows this piece of news, so you can modify it and feeding the algorithm again. Before this update, you only knew the topic clicking in the three-dot menu.
