Shweta Shrivastava: evaluation

Transcript context

…Touching again on safety and human behavior, I was thinking a little bit as we're chatting about, say of Tesla, which has self-driving car, self-driving capabilities and intellectually I know it's probably going to drive a lot better than I am, but I still feel like I need to disengage it occasionally when I'm on a curvy road. I'm just like, I don't know about this, I don't want to leave room for error if there's something that weird that happens. And I imagine someone designing product for that weird behavior where I should probably trust it because it's probably a lot better driver than I am, but I don't know, I feel like I can do a better job. Is there anything you've learned about, I don't know, human behavior or how to design software for these sorts of experiences that maybe surprised you or thought was really interesting or that was really important? Since you mentioned Tesla, I just want to clarify that it's a different system that we are building, which is for Waymo, we started by solving the problem of fully autonomous driving without a human driver at the wheel from the get-go. It's not a driver assist or aid system which relies on the human driver taking over when there's a complex situation. So I think that expectation is built into that kind of a product and so the human folks who are using that product will also have that mindset that, hey, I should be ready to take over when the situation demands because we've built the system from the get-go to work in a fully autonomous mode without a human driver intervention at the wheel. We had to integrate this into our design philosophy from the very beginning that this has to feel credible, predictable and the writers have to be able to trust the system. So that has been sort of the core of the design philosophy. And so, what happens is, and I heard this from you as well, which resonated with me and I've heard this from a lot of our writers, that for the first five minutes of the ride it's, wow, is this thing really happening. But then it starts to feel very natural and as if this is how it was always meant to be. After the first five minutes, this is like uneventful. That's exactly how it's supposed to feel, but it's not a happenstance that it feels that way. The naturalness, the smoothness and still adhering to safety at all times are things that are designed into the system. And then we make sure that the rider has visibility into what's happening. If they're not wearing the seatbelt, the rider support would call them. So then they know, okay, there's a human that they can reach out to if they have an issue. They can look at the monitor in the car to understand what the car is seeing. So I think all these little things help develop that trust in the system. On that same note, what's one thing that your teams have built that creates a lot of trust or maybe it was a surprisingly important element in creating trust in the experience in terms of the product, especially in, I don't know, either the app or in car experience.…

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