By Mariella Moon, Engadget
While Google Assistant can respond to voice commands, you still probably interact with it by touch on your phone. In fact, the tech giant noticed that nearly half of Assistant interactions use voice and touch, which is why it gave the high-tech helper a makeover with much bigger images and more visuals. If you use the Assistant on your phone to control smart devices, you'll now see new controls, including sliders to adjust your lights' brightness or your speakers' volume.
You can now also tweak and personalize any text you ask Assistant to compose and send, thanks to its new interactive messaging interface. Developers can customize what they want you to see within Assistant, as well -- Starbucks, for instance, now displays items on its menu. Food Network has bigger photos of its recipes, while FitStar displays images of the workouts you look up to provide a quick reference of how to execute particular exercises.
In addition, if you're an Android user, you can now simply swipe up from Assistant's screen to see an overview of your day. By introducing a more visual Assistant, Google is likely hoping you'll get used to accessing it more instead of simply jumping from one app to another if you're only going to, say, adjust the lights or look up sports scores anyway.
While Google Assistant can respond to voice commands, you still probably interact with it by touch on your phone. In fact, the tech giant noticed that nearly half of Assistant interactions use voice and touch, which is why it gave the high-tech helper a makeover with much bigger images and more visuals. If you use the Assistant on your phone to control smart devices, you'll now see new controls, including sliders to adjust your lights' brightness or your speakers' volume.
You can now also tweak and personalize any text you ask Assistant to compose and send, thanks to its new interactive messaging interface. Developers can customize what they want you to see within Assistant, as well -- Starbucks, for instance, now displays items on its menu. Food Network has bigger photos of its recipes, while FitStar displays images of the workouts you look up to provide a quick reference of how to execute particular exercises.
In addition, if you're an Android user, you can now simply swipe up from Assistant's screen to see an overview of your day. By introducing a more visual Assistant, Google is likely hoping you'll get used to accessing it more instead of simply jumping from one app to another if you're only going to, say, adjust the lights or look up sports scores anyway.
