After months of lockdown restrictions, sacrifices and enormous covid-related upheaval, it’s important to take the perks where you can get them.
So when Marianne Gallagher, from Glasgow, saw that Spotify was gifting Google smart speakers to new subscribers, she jumped at the chance.
Due to its popularity and the vast number of sign-ups to the music streaming site, the giveaway didn’t last long.
But Ms Gallagher, 30, was one of the lucky few to benefit from the deal, and found herself excitedly unpacking her brand-new Google Nest Mini two days later.
It was only then, when she was setting up the new freebie, she got a nasty surprise – and was left reeling from Google’s probing voice-activation command.
“Now say… ‘Hey Google, make a call to Mum.’”
Having lost her mother to cancer ten years prior, Ms Gallagher couldn’t bring herself to read it aloud.
“My brain just went, ‘I don’t have a Mum!’” she explained. “That voice recognition command really reinforced the fact that I couldn’t have a conversation with my Mum anymore.
“Up until then the set-up process had been really slick and seamless – as you would expect from Google – so the sample command really caught me off guard. It just didn’t compute.”
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During lockdown, thousands of people have been isolated in their homes and from their friends and family to the point of facing intense loneliness or social anxiety.
It’s not a position anyone wants to be in, and can be a time when many individuals – especially those who have lost loved ones – can feel particularly vulnerable.
“During lockdown lots and lots of people will have been taking advantage of this offer to lift their spirits” said Marianne. “If someone has gone through lockdown on their own and aren't feeling themselves, something like this - which might seem really small and every day - could really hit them in the chest.
“It’s been over ten years since my Mum died, but that’s not to say it couldn’t have a huge impact on somebody else.”
While most of Google voice commands tend to stick to functional questions and directives – such as “What’s my commute like?”, “Will it rain tomorrow?” and “Set the alarm for 7.30” - Marianne worries of the impacts the more personal voice prompt could have on people dealing with grief.
“I can understand why Google might have thought it would be an ideal question, seeing as it is one of the most frequently given commands when using the Google Nest.
“But it hurt when I immediately realised that this wasn’t something I was going to be able to do, and it struck me as such a massive oversight.
“Why would you use that command for set-up when it’s so obviously not going to be a possibility for everyone that’s using it?”
For such a purely functional product, it’s clear that emotional sensitivity is still required in the design of these speakers capable of voice interaction, making to-do lists, calling your friends and checking the weather - to name only a few possibilities.
“You don’t really know how a question like that is going to land, and grief works in pretty mysterious ways” she added. “Sometimes you can be fine for years, but it only takes something like this to come along and you’re back to square one.
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And for Ms Gallagher, compassionate design is extremely important. She added: “Particularly as we are all living lockdown life, we’re spending a lot more time on our own.
“We need some emotional sensitivity in the design of these functional things.”
The ability to use just your voice to get your device to perform all sorts of everyday tasks is one of the key selling points of such speakers – it’s convenient and it’s fast.
But as one of the leading global technology companies, Ms Gallagher had expectations that Google would have had the foresight to omit the voice command she was confronted with - especially since other marketing campaigns frequently provide opt-out preferences for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day material, based on the understanding that these topics and issues can be sensitive or difficult for many people.
“Everybody knows Google is all-knowing and all-seeing” she said. “So why would they make this assumption?
“It’s important to note how much of an impact seemingly ‘little’ things like this can have, because it can actually have a big ripple on someone else’s life.
“It seems like a really clumsy oversight on Google’s part.”
John Birrell of Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland said: "Grief is a painful experience, whether it is caused by a death or by the ending of a relationship in another way.
"Although we process these losses, and perhaps think we are 'okay' with them, the pain of loss is frequently not very far below the surface, and a seemingly unintentional reminder of the loss can often trigger that pain all over again.
"We cannot of course ensure that nobody will ever refer to our mother/father/sibling again - and we would not want people to avoid talking about them, but we would want it done in a compassionate way."
Google has been approached for comment.
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