In this special guest feature, Dan O’Connell, Chief Strategy Officer and a board member at Dialpad, takes a look at what will happen to organizations as they roll out real-time data capabilities this year– they’ll discover new ways to scale faster, fresh ideas to improve operations, and novel ways to reduce friction.
Editor’s note: Dr. Nicholas Allenis a professor of psychology, the director of the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregonand a lead researcher for the latest study hosted on Google Health Studies.In Australia, where I’m from, any topic so contentious that it interrupts whatever a group is doing and prompts loud debate is called a “BBQ stopper.” Discussing whether digital technology is good or bad for wellbeing and mental health is a classic BBQ stopper. And this issue has become even more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic as so many people have turned to digital technology to maintain some semblance of their lifestyle.This is a focus for our work at the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon, where we conduct research and build tools to enhance mental health and wellbeing, especially among underserved and young people. Our goal is to provide people and their support networks with actionable feedback on their wellbeing.We’re expanding our research using Google Health Studies with a study focused on how smartphone use impacts wellbeing. With this research, we hope to uncover insights that help us all build a future where digital products may support us in living healthier, happier lives.Weighing benefits and risksWith today’s smartphones, social media and bottomless streams of content, many are quick to condemn technology based on their conviction that these products must be bad for mental health and wellbeing. But focusing only on these potentially harmful effects doesn’t tell the full story. Nor does it help us reap the full benefits these tools have to offer, while also managing their risks.Technological developments throughout history have had both benefits and risks. We urgently need high-quality research to identify which use patterns are associated with benefits versus risks, and who is likely to experience harmful versus beneficial outcomes. Answering these questions is necessary so that the research community and technology industry can pursue evidence-based product design, education and policy aimed at maximizing benefits and minimizing risks.The need for new researchNot only do we need new research that focuses on both the benefits and risks of technology, we also need to rethink what we ask people, who we include in this research and how we work together to use the findings.Most scientific research on digital wellbeing has relied on self-reported questionnaires, which are heavily subjective. Could you say how many hours or minutes you used your phone yesterday without checking your screen time metrics? Probably not!Existing studies also typically have small or unrepresentative samples. To make sure research and potential solutions support everyone, it’s critical for new research methodologies to incorporate data from people historically underrepresented in health research.Finally, many studies might miss certain patterns of behavior that reveal complex relationships between device use and wellbeing — like the relationship between screen time and sleep.Understanding these relationships can inform insights and guidelines for developers and people to maximize wellbeing and minimize risks. Scientists around the globe are calling for greater transparency and collaboration between the technology sector and independent scientists to solve these problems and provide the answers we need.Studying the impact of technology, with technologyWe believe that technology can help bridge many of these gaps and improve research on digital wellbeing. That’s why the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon is partnering with Google to launch this landmark study.We’ll recruit a large representative sample and collect direct, objective measures of how people use their phones, with their informed consent. We’ll use passive and continuous sensing technology to do this, rather than relying only on self reports. The study will also use participants’ phones to directly measure many of the well-established building blocks of wellbeing, such as sleep and physical activity.How to participateThe study takes four weeks to complete and is open to adults based in the U.S. who use an Android phone and can complete daily activities without assistance. Participants will also have the option to add relevant Fitbit data, including step count and physical activity.[f1908e]The data collected will be managed according to strict ethical standards and will only be used for research and to inform better products. The data will never be sold or used for advertising.We hope you’ll join this important study so we can build a healthier digital future together for everyone. Download Google Health Studies, and sign up for the study starting Friday, May 27.
Web3, where platforms and apps were supposed to be built and owned by users, is spurring the greatest consolidation of power in recent times.
Using blockchain technology in Web3, DAOs give members the power to vote and to see the outcome of that vote in a completely transparent way.
In this contributed article, Scott Mazza, co-founder and COO of Vitality CBD, discusses groundbreaking discoveries in sports rehab, specifically how big data is the differentiator – ML algorithms and AI-powered tools will be invaluable for trawling through scientific literature to find relevant studies as well as combining different datasets.
How can we protect our data privacy in the age of big tech? We need to shift how we think of our privacy, and advocate for its protection.
In this contributed article, Armen A. Avakian, MBA, Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO) of Hexact, Inc., discusses how SME’s and solopreneurs can collect and evaluate data that will help them operate more efficiently and boost lead generation. The solution is automation powered by artificial intelligence!
In this special guest feature, Ran Margaliot, COO and VP R&D for Affogata, discusses how nalyzing and sorting through unstructured data saves countless hours and recognizes patterns in seconds that even skilled data professionals may never uncover. That data “superpower” can lead to better products that adapt in real-time, responsive customer service, and a sharing of insights across an organization magnifies its impact even further. The impact is well-demonstrated, and there is plenty of data and case studies to prove it; the final step is for human decision-makers to make the decision sooner rather than later.
Editor’s note: Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and we’ll be sharing more on how we’re partnering with people with disabilitiesand what we’re doing to make education more accessible.The heart of our mission at Google is making the world’s information truly accessible. But the reality is we can only realize this mission with the help of the community. This year at I/O, we announced one more step in the right direction, thanks to feedback and help from our users: We’re making it easier for braille readers to use Android. Available in our next Android 13 Beta in a few weeks, we are beginning to build out-of-the-box support for braille displays in Talkback, our screen reader within Android.A refreshable braille display is an electro-mechanical device that creates braille patterns by raising rounded pins through holes in a flat surface. Braille-literate computer users use the braille display to touch-read braille dots representing text. With the display, you can also type out braille. These devices help people with deafblindness access mobile phones and people with blindness use their phones silently. Previously, people connected their Android devices to braille displays using the BrailleBack app, which required a separate download from the Play Store, or used a virtual keyboard within Talkback instead of a physical device.With this new update, there are no additional downloads necessary to use most braille displays. People can use braille displays to access many of the same features available with Talkback. For instance, you can use display buttons to navigate your screen and then do activities like compose an email, make a phone call, send a text message or read a book.There are also new shortcuts that make it easier to use braille displays with Talkback. Now there are shortcuts for navigating so it’s easier to scroll and move to the next character, word or line. There are also shortcuts for settings and for editing, like jumping to the end of documents or selecting, copying and pasting.You can sign up for the Android beta program to try out Talkback 13 in the next beta release.We are grateful to the community for their ongoing feedback that makes features like these possible. This is just the first step forward in developing this integration, and we can’t wait to do even more to expand the feature and to create even more related capabilities.
What if managing your video streaming business didn’t have to be so complex? What if your team didn’t have to dig through data across devices, apps, live streams and video on-demand to find insights?We’ve built new solutions in Ad Manager to simplify these processes and save publishers time — helping you automatically uncover new opportunities, manage all your video streams with flexibility and ultimately grow your video revenue.Automatically uncover new insightsAd Manager already provides video-specific tools and time-based metrics to help you understand the true potential of every commercial break. But making sense of your video reporting data and finding insights for your business can be a challenging, manual task.Our new Programmatic Video Health Tools save time by highlighting opportunities you may have missed, right when you log into your account. These granular insights can help you determine why some inventory performs better than others at auction.The programmatic video signals card automatically generates a snapshot of how your video inventory is performing. It shows signals that are important to advertisers, such as viewability, app or web domain name and audience information — plus their impact on revenue. These three dimensions make it easier for advertisers to value your inventory and can help you grow your revenue by identifying where these metrics can improve. Globally, publishers with high programmatic inventory signal coverage see an average 25% revenue uplift compared to inventory with low programmatic inventory signal coverage.[be2de3]We’ve heard from publishers that error reporting for lost ad requests (that can directly impact revenue) requires a lot of manual tasks across multiple video-specific reports. With the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) errors insights card, Ad Manager uses automation to quickly show you the number of errors on your inventory and which line items are causing the errors, so you don’t have to spend time running a custom report.You can even sort the list of line items to find errors with the highest impact on revenue. By surfacing these actionable error insights early, the VAST error insights card can help you increase revenue by fixing misconfigured settings or broken creatives.Lastly, because we know every publisher has unique business needs, we’ll release a Video Performance Alerts solution to beta to help you automate insights based on specific requirements. With Video Performance Alerts, you’ll be able to create customized email alerts for your choice of campaign metrics and dimensions. For example, you can create an alert for when total impressions across a line item drops below an expected daily threshold. So instead of constantly logging in to check on campaign performance, you’ll get notified automatically.Identify and fix problems faster with new reporting toolsQuickly finding a problem will help you resolve it sooner and earn more revenue. This is especially important during traffic spikes from large audiences tuning into new episodes or live events. So we created real-time video reporting to help you quickly get the information you need.With real-time video reporting, we’ve improved historical ad serving data availability by 10x, shortening the time to access performance data to under two minutes — so you can get ad unit or line item level data to find and fix errors before the next commercial break. Keep an eye out for new solutions over the coming quarters to help you identify and solve issues in real time.For publishers serving ads to their content on YouTube with Ad Manager, we’ve launched a new troubleshooting tool to open beta. With the YouTube ads delivery tool, you can test ad delivery on YouTube inventory. It lets you see data like ad requests, key-values and details for the winning line items to help you validate and fix issues. To make sure everything is behaving and delivering as expected, you can even test line items and simulate requests.Supporting your video streaming growthWe hope these new automated solutions and faster reporting tools give you the time and space to focus on growing your business. Look out for more updates this year to help you improve troubleshooting, test your set up and find more insights.