Little Moments of Joy
A few months back, by accident, I decided to name one of my timers on my Google Home because I had a few running concurrently during a cooking session with the family. All of a sudden, the usual message back was replaced with a chime and a graphic depicting the food. Best yet, when the timer was up, the usual alarm was replaced with a very nice tune.
“Hey Google! Set a pasta alarm for 10 minutes.”
A refrain from Tarantella forms the chime.
“Hey Google! Set a waffle timer for two minutes.”
You get a chime from Do You Know The Muffin Man.
“Hey Google! Set a 10 minute cookie timer.”
Well, you get many hurrahs.
It took a bit of effort from the engineers to get this in but it brings joy every time I use it. We need more design like this. Fortunately, with the prevalence of generative AI, we should be able to scale these moments of joy into the user experience.
