Transcript

Noah: (00:00:00)
This generation is our most comprehensive and advanced fitness experience. Yet in this generation it's really about balancing performance and recovery because it's not just about going all out on your workouts, it's also about balancing that intensity with your body's need for recovery.

Rachid: (00:00:24)
Today we're meeting with Noah Presler, who is the product manager for Pixel Watch. Let's find out all about Pixel Watch 3. Now in two sizes.

Rachid: (00:00:35) Noah, apart from checking the time, tell me the one thing you use your Pixel Watch the most for.

Noah: (00:00:41)
That's a great question. I think the biggest thing I like to use my Pixel watch for these days is planning my day. First thing when I wake up, the first thing I do is check the time, but then I check my readiness, my Sleep Score, the weather. There's so many things that shape my whole routine for the day. I need to know, do I bring an umbrella? Do I bring my running shoes? Am I ready to work out? And so that's super helpful. And the new Fitbit morning brief has been really impactful in helping me shape that routine each day.

Rachid: (00:01:10)
So you've been working on Fitbit products since I think sort of 2018, but you were an intern before that at Google. What's it like to be an intern at Google?

Noah: (00:01:20)
Yeah, I started my Google journey during the sophomore summer of my college years. Uh, I actually joined Google as a software engineering intern working on the Android platform and being an intern at Google was such an incredible experience, both from a relationship building point of view. Some of the people I met are my best friends to this day. They were groomsmen at my wedding and bridesmaids at my wedding. Also, from a learning perspective, I just learned such a great deal about technology software, about how to build products that impact people's lives and it really just made me so excited to work on more that has that type of impact on people.

Rachid: (00:02:01)
So you then end up in what we called Hangouts Meet Hardware. Yeah. Hangouts of course became Google Meet. So that's sort of the stuff. I guess if you, if you go into any sort of big company that uses Google Workspace, they might see the products that you worked on back then, right?

Noah: (00:02:15)
Yeah, that's right. Many of our Google Workspace customers are using Google Meet just like we do here at Google. They have the tablets in the room that help you sign into the meetings. They have cameras powered by Chrome boxes with great speakers and microphones. And the first full-time role I had at Google, I really wanted to work on something that people paid for and actually invested in, uh, or companies invested in. And so it was really awesome getting to work on Hangouts, Meet Hardware, get that first generation product off the ground. You

Rachid: (00:02:45)
Go from Google Meet eventually ending up at Fitbit. What was sort of the motivation to go to Fitbit, which probably is a quite a different team and certainly a different product than what you had in Hangouts meet?

Noah: (00:02:58)
Yeah, so for me, health and fitness and wearables have always been something that I'm super passionate about. My mother is a personal trainer. She ran her personal training business out of my basement. Uh, we had like a little gym built out in our basement and her clients would come by. I was a high school athlete and she would kick my butt and my friend's butts training with her each day down in the gym as well. But you know, she ignited a passion in me for fitness, but she also ignited a passion in me around health. My mom has a very rare disease that took her 20 plus years to get diagnosed and it always made me really want to build technology that could use data to make your health information more uni universally accessible and useful, uh, and help people make those types of discoveries and life changes much earlier on.

So I went to Johns Hopkins University for college specifically because I was interested in health tech. And then I ended up joining Google and it was several years before we de decided to acquire Fitbit. But the day that we decided to acquire Fitbit, I knew I had to work on that and I joined SHIP as soon as I could and spent a year plus working on the acquisition of Fitbit, planning the acquisition of Fitbit, figuring out how we integrate Fitbit and Google to deliver something that's really better because they're both together. And so I've been thrilled to get to live the dream that I really had since I was very young, to work in health and fitness and wearables and to help people live longer, healthier lives.

Rachid: (00:04:35)
So now you get to steer that ship as a product manager for Pixel Watch. And of course we'll get into the new Pixel Watch 3 series. Just one thing I wanted to pick up on, you mentioned being an athlete back in school. Is there any sort of sports you're into where perhaps you're Pixel Watch is helpful?

Noah: (00:04:51)
Yeah, so back then I was a wrestler, so I was a year round high school wrestler. These days my shoulders are not good enough to keep up with that , but now I really love to do a few things. I am a very intermediate and regular runner and so the upgrades we have this generation have been hugely impactful to my running routine. And then I love strength training, so I try to keep a balanced workout routine of cardio and then building muscle and trying to keep that bone density and strength up as well.

Rachid: (00:05:21)
Sounds amazing. And we definitely should talk about running a little bit later today, but let's look at Pixel Watch 3 now a very familiar design say for that, there are now two versions of Pixel Watch 3, uh, the same size as last year and a larger one. Why did you decide and how do you make that decision to sort of make two sizes?

Noah: (00:05:39)
Yeah, that's right. Pixel Watch 3 does introduce two sizes for the very first time. We have a 41 millimeter size, which is the same size you're already familiar with, with the Pixel Watch 1 and 2 and an all new 45 millimeter size. And the reason that we decided to invest and build two sizes is because when it comes to something you wear on your wrist all day, every day, one size does not fit all. It's so important to have the right size for you so that you can wear it during your activity, during your sleep so you can see what you need. So people prefer a larger size because they have a larger wrist or they prefer a larger size because they want that bigger display. They wanna see more and do more with less swiping. And so the larger size is a super important part of the portfolio and we wanna make sure we have the right selection for everybody.

Rachid: (00:06:26)
Great. So of course Pixel Watch 3, the larger one has a bigger screen, but then the smaller one also if, if I'm not mistaken, has a bigger screen in the same form factor compared to Pixel Watch 2. So how much bigger is it and what is sort of the benefit there?

Noah: (00:06:42)
So both sizes, the 41 millimeter and the 45 millimeter for the first time have actual displays. That's our first time bringing actual displays to Pixel Watch. The actual displays are awesome. They have 16% smaller bezels that's the border around the watch, right? Um, what that means is you get more screen on the 41 millimeter size, you get over 10% more screen real estate. And on the larger size, when you compare it to the Pixel Watch 2, it's 40% more screen and you really feel the impact of the 40%. You can see more, you have more complications, more exercise shortcuts on that exercise tile. So they're both amazing. They've grown a lot so they're bigger, but they're also brighter. The actual display technology enables two times brighter peak brightness of 2000 knits, which is great for outdoor visibility when you're out on a run and they can dim down just to one knit of brightness too in dark environments. So if you're in the movie theater and you need to check the time, it won't disrupt the people around you.

Rachid: (00:07:39)
Amazing. Or you know, won't shoot a bunch of light at me when I'm just awake, I presume. Exactly. So many colors. I know we have obsidian with matte black porcelain, polished silver, hazelwood, champagne gold. Yeah. What would you pick for for yourself?

Noah: (00:07:54)
Yeah, I really, really love the 45 millimeter size that has an exclusive color, which is the Hazel housing, the Matte Hazel housing and the Hazel Band. They match perfectly together. The Pixel Watch 3 and all the pixel watches, uh, were really inspired by that polished river stone aesthetic. When you feel it and hold it in your hand, it kind of looks like a river stone that's been polished and smoothed off by years. And water, the hazel color has that forest green outdoorsy appeal. So when you combine those together, it just really fits an aesthetic that I love.

Rachid: (00:08:29)
For those people wondering like what does it look like? I'd encourage you to go to the Google store at store.google.com and view all the color options available. By the way, as someone having a Pixel Watch too, can I continue to use my bands on the 3 series as well?

Noah: (00:08:44)
Yeah, if you're a 41 millimeter size, you'll have compatibility from your Pixel Watch, 1, 2, and 3. The 45 millimeter size, it's larger, it has that bigger circumference and radius, so it is a scaled up band attach. So 45 millimeter bands will be separate than the 41 millimeter bands, but rest assured if you're using that 41 millimeter, again your bands are gonna continue to work.

Rachid: (00:09:06)
I guess everyone working on computer software, hardware, especially things that are mobile, they're always struggling for sort of power efficiency battery life and I think that's nowhere more true than in a watch which is so small. So it also has a, a smaller battery. Did you manage to sort of improve battery life on the 41 millimeter? So the same size as last year? And I'm also wondering what about the larger one because I suppose you know, the device is larger so you maybe can put in a larger battery, but you also put in a larger screen. So how does it balance out?

Noah: (00:09:37)
Uh, I love that you mentioned just how small and challenging the watch form factor is. It's amazing that these tiny devices have LTE Bluetooth and they're communicating to satellites to triangulate your location. They have super bright displays, they're doing so much work for you, but they need to last. That's super important. You want it to track your activity, you want it to track your sleep. So with the Pixel Watch 3, this generation, our devices last longer and they charge faster. And that's a combination of a few things. One is more power efficient, actual displays, they're bigger and they're brighter, but they're more power efficient than before. The second is Wear OS five big improvements in the software with this generation. And the third is continued investment in a hybrid architecture that has a super power efficient core for those all day, every day continuous sensing experiences and a more performant core for those intense compute experience as well. And then we have a lot of amazing tools across both sizes that are improving battery life. This generation, there's a new battery saver mode that extends battery life to 36 hours without compromising on your health and fitness tracking and without compromising on safety features you love like fall detect, the watches are going to charge faster than before. So the 41 millimeter size charges 20% faster than the Pixel Watch 2. And then lastly we have this amazing new mode called auto bedtime mode. Auto bedtime mode detects when you fall asleep and will automatically put your watch into a bedtime mode that saves battery but also gives you disruption free sleep, turning off the always on display and turning off notifications and it automatically detects when you wake up too, taking you out of bedtime mode. You

Rachid: (00:11:21)
Know, actually that feature is so great for me because it's my girlfriend who constantly forgets to enable bedtime mode. Totally. So it's not even her waking up because of notifications, it's me staying awake because the screen is on. So oh yes, really uh, thankful for that feature.

Noah: (00:11:36)
Yeah, it gives you one less thing to worry about. And then you mentioned one other thing, it's the 45 millimeter size has a bigger battery. Yeah, you're right. It has a 35% bigger battery than before. And so all of those power improvements we made gen over gen, they apply to both sizes and then it gets even better with a 35% bigger battery on the 45 millimeter.

Rachid: (00:11:56)
Now we've talked about what it looks like, what's sort of inside on the hardware side. Now let's talk about what it can actually do for us. And of course, you know, Pixel Watch with all the Fitbit integrations we need to talk about health and fitness. What's new and improved compared to Pixel Watch two when it comes to health and fitness?

Noah: (00:12:12)
Yeah, this generation is our most comprehensive and advanced fitness experience yet in this generation it's really about balancing performance and recovery because it's not just about going all out on your workouts, it's also about balancing that intensity with your body's need for recovery. So on the performance side we have huge updates to running because a Running Companion shouldn't just track your runs. It should help you plan your runs, it should guide you through those runs and then it should help you reflect on your improvement over time. So there are a set of updates we've made there in running. You can start with a new workout builder in the Fitbit mobile app and on your watch you can go into the Fitbit mobile app, you can add warmups, cool downs, add runs with targets for distance time. You can set targets for pace and heart rate zone, you can turn them into intervals with repeats and then it's super easy, it's just a tap to start on watch and you're good to go or you can save it for later too. And then during your run you get this real time guidance. It's like a running buddy right on your wrist. And so it's gonna guide you and tell you, hey, your warm ups over it's time for that first sprint. During your sprint. If you set a target pace, you'll get those haptics and audio cues letting you know when you're below your target range and alerting you to pick up the pace to go a little bit faster. So that real time guidance is super engaging for me. I found it holds me accountable to the plan I sit out with and it just makes it more fun too. And then at the end of your run you can reflect on how do you perform, how did you do against your goal, what percent of the time were you in your target pace or target heart rate zone? And what's awesome is that Pixel Watch 3 has our most accurate heart rate for running that we've ever delivered.

Noah: (00:13:52)
And accuracy is super core to a Pixel Watch overall. But with this generation we've extended that same machine learning approach to sensing to not just track your heart rate but to track your running form. So it'll track the minute details of your form, like your step cadence, your stride length, your vertical oscillation. And these are pretty advanced metrics. So it's not just giving you the data, but it's helping you understand what to do with it, giving you insights about how you're changing over time, how this run compares to your past six months of runs. Now all of that comes together in a run dashboard where you can see how your weekly mileage is increasing over the course of the month, three months the year. You can see how your advanced form metrics are trending, is your step cadence actually getting faster, shorter? And you can also see your PR so you can celebrate those milestones where you ran your fastest mile, your fastest 5K or your longest ever run. So those are the updates that we have in running. It's a super exciting set. And then happy to dig into recovery and balancing that activity with rest as well. Next.

Rachid: (00:14:58)
Yeah, let's get into that in a little bit. I'm wondering, and, and this is a real story, I sort of, I wanted to say, got tricked into signing up for a 15k run this November. Nice. I'm, I'm a bit nervous, Noah, I gotta tell you. Yeah. How would Pixel Watch 3 with all these new features for running and runners help me get there? Will it also sort of help me design and create that running plan in order to get to that 15k in a in a reasonable time? Yeah.

Noah: (00:15:26)
Well if you think about what you need to do each day, uh, a lot of times we've all had this problem, you just go out and you start running because you need to run, right? But what's really impactful is when you run with the plan, when you, when you set out with a goal in mind and something that's gonna hold you accountable, that goal. So if you want to go and you're you, you wanna run that six mile run today, it's super fast and easy. You just click add a run, click distance, scroll up with the crown to six miles and you're good to go. You can set those target heart rate zones and pace so that you're staying in like a nice vigorous zone and you're not heading into peak. So you can keep yourself consistent. But one thing that's really cool is that if you subscribe to Fitbit Premium, Google AI will actually do the legwork for you. So it'll not

Rachid: (00:16:11)
Literally, I suppose, but

Noah: (00:16:13)
That's right, you still have to do the runs. Yeah, . Uh, but it'll use AI to recommend the perfect run for you each day set to your goals, your preferences, understanding how ready you are for the day as well. Uh, and then you'll just be able to tap and start it on wrist. So you don't even need to build the run. It'll build the run for you.

Rachid: (00:16:29)
Amazing. So if it builds the run, it sort of needs to understand what is a great run. That's right. So how did you teach Fitbit Premium and Pixel Watch 3? Like what is good and what is not good?

Noah: (00:16:39)
Yeah, we actually worked with a panel of experts where those experts were given briefs to understand a participant's training history, to understand their goals, to understand their preferences. Like I like to do my long runs on Sundays and it also includes their recovery for the day. And then professional coaches would actually recommend how what run would be perfect for that day and grade our recommendations on how good of a run would that be for this person. So all of that has come together at scale to help us build a really powerful AI powered system that just makes sure you get the right run for you each day based on all of those biometrics and goals and preferences.

Rachid: (00:17:21)
Well you mentioned most runners who start out running, they just go running without a plan. Yeah, I think I, I just sort of passed that phase by now. and then in that plan you should probably add something like resting. What can Pixel Watch 3 and Fitbit do there to make sure that, you know, I'm not maybe not running every day because that might not be helpful in the long run.

Noah: (00:17:42)
Yeah, that's right. And there are two parts to that. You both wanna balance rest and recovery and your body's need for that recovery as well as preventing injury, right? So sometimes your body is gonna need to rest and take time and maybe on a certain day you just didn't get enough sleep and you're not ready to take as much on. But if you keep running and running and increasing your distance, you can also make yourself more prone to injury. And so we have tools that help with both. Starting with the daily readiness score, Fitbit already offers a daily readiness score, um, that helps you understand when it's time to push or prioritize recovery. And we're making two big updates to daily readiness with this generation. The first is that we truly believe that recovery is so important to the fitness experience that we're making daily readiness available to all users with no subscription required.

Noah: (00:18:33)
And the second piece is that the Daily readiness score has an all new algorithm that's more tuned to your body and your body's state of recovery. So it uses the most important biometrics of your heart rate variability, your resting heart rate, and your sleep to give you a more precise picture of how ready you are to train. So those are the updates we have to readiness. And then the other piece here is tracking your cardio load. And this is where the preventing Overtraining component comes in. Cardio load tracks the intensity of your training over time and gives you a picture of how hard your heart is working. And as you use the cardio load feature, it'll give you a training status. The training status tells you are you improving your fitness, are you maintaining fitness? And it gives you that visual representation of are you at risk of under training or over training so you know when you're pushing it or when you're not pushing it enough.

Noah: (00:19:27)
And the last piece that brings this all together is a feature we call target load Each day based on your cardio load history and your daily readiness score, you'll get a personalized target of how much cardio load to take on. So if you had a night out with friends and the next morning your resting heart rate is higher, indicating your heart is working harder to help your body recover, we've all been there. Yeah. Uh, your readiness score will be low and your target load as a result will be low, nudging you to prioritize recovery. Whereas if you had a super restful weekend, you took the couple days off just to rest up and heal up, your heart rate variability might spike indicating you're ready for your peak performance and you'll have a high readiness score and a higher target load that reflects less cardio load over the last several days indicating you're ready to take on the most you've taken on. So it really all comes together with readiness, cardio load and target load to guide your training and help you balance your training and activity with recovery.

Rachid: (00:20:30)
Target load sort of tells me how much work I should put in perhaps for the next day in order to maybe not get undertrained. Is that a way of looking at it? Exactly.

Noah: (00:20:39)
Right.

Rachid: (00:20:39)
And of course, you know, as a product manager and several Googlers in your team, I'm sure, and we, we've talked about this in the podcast before, that we have a community of dog fooder. So as our people who get access to devices and features a little bit earlier before, uh, you know, people in the outside world get access to it, what kind of feedback do you get from those people? And then do you perhaps have any sort of personal experience where you're trying these features for the first time and then notice like, hey, this is actually useful in a certain way or, for reaching a certain goal?

Noah: (00:21:10)
Yeah, I mean, I am so glad you brought up dog food. It's such a valuable source of feedback and this goes out to all of the dog fooders who have been testing our products. Thank you for giving amazing and very thoughtful feedback with this generation because we have such a focus on running. We actually took a unique approach and we called it Jog fooding . So our runners, we have a special cohort of hundreds of runners testing our features and we call them our jog footers. Uh, very endearingly and yeah, they're amazing stories from the jog footers and amazing stories that I've actually just experienced myself. Like I have been training and trying to increase my running mileage. One of my friends is running an an Iron Man and I've been trying to keep up with a bunch of his training, but I was gonna go on a nice Saturday run with him, a six mile run. And I woke up that morning, and I saw I had a low readiness score. I saw that my resting heart rate was six bpm higher than normal. Wow. And I would've gone out otherwise and taken time to run, but because I had that low readiness and my target load was nudging me to take time to recover, rescheduled it to Sunday, I focused on restorative activities that Saturday I stretched, I did a little bit of yoga, and when I woke up the next morning, I actually had a high HRV and a high readiness and I was ready to hit the road. So just a personal example of how it can really shape the decisions you make and and help improve your body's readiness for activity each day as a result.

Rachid: (00:22:41)
Noah, I know that the Pixel Watch is capable of doing phone calls if you have the LTE version. I just love the idea of how we're still managing to modernize phone calls, something that's in a way very old school. Anything you added for Pixel Watch 3 that might be useful here?

Noah: (00:22:57)
I love using the phone call capability when I am outside on a run, I don't bring my phone with me. So when my wife calls and is like, why are you not home for dinner yet? It's very helpful to be able to pick it up and reply, but the call is just sweet from pixels really amazing on Pixel Watch, it can already screen spam calls that you don't want, so you don't have those disruptions during your workouts, but with this generation it can now pick up and hold calls that you do want. And then Google AI is actually going to pick up the call and say to the caller, Hey, please hold the person you're calling needs a moment to find a quiet space and you can tap a button to be able to find where your phone is and ring it if you don't know where it is. Which happens to me quite often too.

Rachid: (00:23:39)
That's probably gonna be my favorite feature, , something I'm looking forward to as well is have you been able to design new watch faces for, for Pixel Watch 3?

Noah: (00:23:49)
Oh yes. We have some amazing new watch faces. So bigger, brighter displays. They deserve a beautiful canvas that's painted on top of that. And there are two watch faces that I particularly love. One is called Active. Uh, the active Watch face just gives you tons of complications, giving you information about your health and your fitness with a quick button you can tap to just immediately begin an exercise. And another that you can tap to open the Fitbit app and see your metrics as well. So it's great for people who love to be active and it looks gorgeous on the bigger displays. On the small 41 millimeter, it looks great and on the 45 millimeter you actually get an extra ring of complications around the edges. Uh, so it really uses that 40% bigger screen. The other watch face I love is called Field. And the Field Watch Face is a more classic look. It's an analog clock and it has that density of information, it has tons of data packed into it and it looks really great. I love to use it with the Metal Links band when I'm going to, uh, an event like a wedding. Uh, it gives it that very classic watch face appeal and I think people are gonna love it. And

Rachid: (00:24:58)
What's sort of the daily driver of watch faces for you?

Noah: (00:25:01)
Oh, I, I love the active watch face on a daily basis. I need to know everything that's going on with my health and fitness, but I'm not afraid to switch it up. Uh, whenever I'm out for dinner, uh, whenever I'm dressed up a little bit more, I like to switch it back to field. Talk

Rachid: (00:25:16)
To me about an ultra wideband chip that's in Pixel Watch 3. What will that do for me?

Noah: (00:25:22)
Yeah, that's right. We have a new ultra wideband chip in Pixel Watch for the very first time. And ultra wideband is a really interesting technology. It provides super accurate low latency, secure ranging meaning it can tell the distance between objects with really great accuracy between your watch and your phone or your watch and some other cool devices that we'll talk about too. So one of the use cases I love is that with my Pixel 9 Pro, I can just swipe to unlock even when I have sunglasses on, even when it's dark out, even when I'm not using the fingerprint sensor, my watch just unlocks my phone based on my presence super fast. Most of the time I don't even need to use a pin code or any other form of authentication. My watch just does it for me. And that way your watch is kind of turning into your digital key. And so it not only unlocks your phone, but it actually kind unlock your car. So a use case that this is really powerful for is if you drive to a park to go on that nice long run, as you train for your 15K, you'll be able to leave your keys at home. You don't have to have them jingling in your pocket. You can go for your run. And as you approach your car, the car beautifully reacts to your presence. You reach for the door handle and unlock the door, the car unlocks and you can just tap to start your car. And when you leave the car, you will never forget to lock it again. It just locks behind you and you get this helpful alert saying, Hey, your car locked. Um, so super delightful when I've had a chance to test it out. It's been amazing. And we're launching that, starting with our launch partners, BMW and Mini.

Rachid: (00:26:54)
Something that seemed really powerful to me is the ability to use Google Maps offline, for example. Yeah,

Noah: (00:27:00)
Yeah, that's a great one. We want people to feel safe and be safe when they're outside navigating the world and offline. Google Maps gives you this amazing superpower. Most of us, we download offline maps to our phone and when you charge your Pixel Watch, those are automatically gonna sync to your watch. No extra steps required. You don't need to pull up the app, you don't need to click download. It's just there. And so then when you're going out and about, even when you don't have connectivity, you can search for nearby coffee shops, restrooms, convenience stores. You can navigate to them. You can see the map and understand where you are and what's around you. So we hope it'll be really impactful for people as they navigate the world.

Rachid: (00:27:39) Noah, thank you so much for joining the Made By Google podcast. I'm sure many people will be extra excited now to try Pixel Watch 3. So check out the Google store to find it there and hope to have you back on soon when you have something new.

Noah:(00:27:51)
Absolutely. We will soon.