Google’s AI offering – Allo[Preview version]

Happy Diwali to all.

 

On this auspicious occasion of Diwali, I am back to my blog writing, almost after 6 months.

 

This time I have a cool & interesting information for you that is Google’s artificial intelligence based messaging app ‘Allo’.

 

You must have observed that since last year all tech giants like Google, Microsoft & Apple have entered into this future computing called artificial intelligence, all their events include one of the software or hardware based on this technology.  All these software giants are working towards a new era of computing which will change our lives in coming days.

 

In simple language artificial intelligence [A I] is computer technique which learns the user preferences, language, vocabulary, based on these learning it improves the output & provide you the most accurate answers, it is also known as machine learning. One of the well-known examples of A I is a virtual assistance offered by tech giants for example Microsoft has Cortana, Apple has Siri & Google has Google Now.

 

Today I will pen down some initial observations for one of the Google’s latest offering Allo.

 

This is a Google’s smart solution over ”WhatsApp” & other popular messaging services but it has one additional feature which has raised many eyebrows that is artificial intelligence.

How to get Allo.

 

Google launched this app in the month of September, since then I heard a lot about this and was really curious but scared that whether it will support my old phone?  I was also worried on its accessibility with my android in-built screen-reader “Talkback”, but this Diwali vacation I decided to give a try.  I went to play Store & searched for “Allo”, very first result of this official app from Google, I opened the app details & was really happy that it supports my older Moto G 1st generation mobile. I quickly installed it & started my initial trial.

Initial setup screens.

 

Initial setup screens were really identical to any messaging app, it asked my name, phone & couple of optional questions like profile image, etc..  All these screens were really accessible, I completed the configuration without any challenges & before I go to home screen I got a popup saying that “Message from Google Assistance”

 

I was wondering that immediately after installation who is chatting with me over Allo, when I went to message list I saw this name “Google Assistance”. I opened this conversation & found that I got couple of messages from this computer based service, it is nothing but an A I driven assistance which can help you in your daily tasks.

 

There were some welcome greetings & along with that info regarding how to use Allo effectively.  You can chat using virtual keyboard & even send your message by tapping on “Microphone” icon. I was curious to ask some questions to this service,

 

Being a regular user of virtual assistance like “Google Now” I tapped on “Microphone” icon & asked my typical A I trial question that is “How is weather today?” within a second I got a reply that “It is really hot” and the screen showing local weather details for “Mumbai-Maharashtra”.  Intension behind this question is to check its understanding of GPS location, understanding Indian accent & lastly to know how it leverage the weather forecast service.  Information received from Allo was accurate as it detected my home city “Mumbai” & gave me the correct whether forecast; I confirmed this info through my regular buddy Google Now.

What we can do using Allo – “Google assistance”.

 

Likewise in the above examples we can ask many questions regarding your calendar, meetings, travel details, traffic situation,  your work place & so on, being a crazy foodie I asked Allo at nearest food options & got an instant reply with list of nearest restaurants based on my GPS along with their user ratings & driving directions.

 

User interface of Allo is really simple as expected from Google, few standard controls for chat history, text box for input message & microphone icon for voice based search, one unusual tab here in Allo that is “Suggestions”, this tab includes the A I suggestions from Google.

 

A I integrated in Allo will learn your question style, language, preferences & it will improve its suggestions over the period. These suggestions are always connected to your previous question or answer, for e.g. I asked for “Latest news”, instantly I got all top news as an answer from “Google Assistance”, after this answer my suggestions tab was showing me questions like “Send me news daily”, “Send me news weekly”, I can use one of the suggestions & continue the chat with Assistance. This computer based conversation is so interactive that it feels like human, this is the beauty of A I.  You can ask many other queries to “Google Assistance” & this list is going to improve as it is only a month old & currently in its preview version.

Play game with Google assistance.

 

During one of my conversations with assistance I got few suggestions like “Play game”, “Play song”, play song is very common option for me as I always ask my Google now this question, was really curious on this “Play game” question so I tapped on it & it went to assistance, quickly got list of game types like “History”, “Geography”, “Math’s” & “Bollywood”, hey! What a customized result for Indians

 

I quickly tapped on “Bollywood” & it asked me some more questions like “difficulty type” & “Question numbers”, after answering those initial questions one window popped over the Allo screen, this was nothing but a “Game” window which had my first question with 4 options. 

 

Reading this questions with options was a time consuming task with “talkback” but was highly accessible, I read the question & tapped on my desired answer, I think I was little late in answering this as I got one audio feedback for time out signal, there was no text info on screen regarding this, after this it quickly displayed my next question with options, I answered all these questions & got my final result on a text based window.

 

Wow! What a feeling, I just played a game with Google assistance that too using a screen-reader, it was a really an amazing experience.  This was one of the games which I played, like this you can play many games with assistance

Chatting with your buddies using A I suggestions.

 

As stated earlier, Allo is a messaging app like “WhatsApp”, “Snap chat”, Hike”, etc.  which connects to your buddies over I M chat. One cool feature in Allo is when you send an Allo message to your friend, if he/she is not having Allo then he/she will get an SMS with your message text along with a link to download/install Allo.

 

A couple of days I am chatting with my friend using Allo, I can confirm that it is learning my typing style & also started giving me appropriate suggestions, for e.g. I got a message from my friend “I will call you in sometime”, for this message in suggestion list I had 2 lines “Ok sure” & “Sure no problem”, you won’t believe I always use these lines while talking to my friends, here Google’s A I has  learned this practice of mine & suggested me these replies, most of the visually challenged smart phone users dislike typing on virtual keyboards hence these suggestions may eliminate some typing efforts & frustrations for them.  I am sure that as much as I will use Allo for messaging it will learn my style & will improve its suggestions for better & quicker interactions.

Privacy concern

 

In today’s era of internet based personal services we have this big concern of Privacy, I am neither a billionaire nor a celebrity hence not that worried about my private life & info as no one will be interested in a poor guy like me. If you are concerned about your private chats & details then I recommend you to go through the privacy notice from Google before using this cool app Allo.

Conclusion.

 

As said earlier, this is not a detailed review but an initial observations I made about this app while using it with screen reader program, A I is going to enter our lives in coming days & Allo is one of the recent offerings, I understand that Allo is not going to replace our primary IM buddies like “WhatsApp”, “Hike” but defiantly going to give a tuff competition to them with its uniqueness of A I engine in the messaging app.  I found this app is completely accessible with a screen reader “Talkback”.  I would recommend this app to blind smart phone users for enhancing their chat experience and to use its features.

 

 

 

Food Panda - An accessible online food delivery option.

Accessibility of Food panda app with Talkback for blind users

With emerging e-commerce options everyone is hunting their specific requirement online, it could be high end mobile phones, laptops, tablets or home appliances like T.V, refrigerators, washing machines & microwave ovens.

We even have cool options for fashion, beauty products, furniture & medicines, recently customers getting attracted towards some interesting options which allow them to order daily services like electrician, housekeeping, plumber & ordering delicious food on their door step.

Being a  hardcore foodie I have already tried few leading food delivery apps like Mac delivery, Fasoos, Dominos but none  of them are fully accessible for a visually challenged mobile user, I tried all these options with some sighted help but was not happy as I couldn’t order my food on my own.

Recently I tried one leading food delivery app named “Food Panda” & felt really  amazed with the experience., First time without any sighted person’s help, I could order my food without any sighted help, really a great accessible option.

Food Panda is a leading food delivery service available on internet portal & mobile app, they provide this service in more than 100 countries & India is one of them. With this service you can order food online from your favorite restaurants using many delivery & payment options. You can ask for home delivery & can also choose a pickup.

It has also got multiple payment options like PayTM, Card and Cash On Delivery for some restaurants.

Food Panda provides this service free of charge; you just have to pay for your food.

My colleagues suggested this app couple of months ago, I installed the same into my Android phone [Moto G gen1] & tried with Talkback screen reader. It worked super smoothly.

Except the main menu button all user controls are labeled properly so that you can access this app entirely with the talkback without sighted help.

Initial requirements:

- A smart phone running Android 4.0 or above

- PayTM wallet account for payment, it is an optional requirement but recommended due to the cashback offers & secure payment mode

- Active data connection or a wifi.

How to install?

Like other applications you can install this app from google play store, search for “Food Panda”” it might be the first result, just double tap on it & start the installation by hitting on “Install” button.

This will pop up the permission acceptance tab, review the required permissions & proceed installation by hitting “Accept” button.

This will start the download & installation of app on your phone.

How to order?

To begin the ordering process launch app. You will land on home page of the app. Talkback will announce “Searching for restaurants” and within fraction of seconds screen will be loaded.

You can use your standard navigation gestures to explore the screen, as stated earlier, at top of the screen there is a menu button which is unlabeled but no need to worry as except this one all other controls are labeled.

During navigate from top of the screen after unlabeled button Food Panda app will show your current location fetched from your phones GPS, first line will be name of your city & next line will show the current area, please note this information sequence can be changed using the menu - address option.

After current location info there are two buttons “Search” & “Filter” respectively. Next to these two buttons you will read a number of restaurants open at that particular time, for e.g. “40 open restaurants”.

Next information that Food Panda will list is of all the nearest restaurants along with the important details like food type, delivery time/charge and minimum order amount.

For example below is a text read out to me from the first listed restaurant in my area for your understanding.

“Online payment available”, “Zestoloarparel – fast food, sandwich, delivery Rs. 0, Min order Rs. 150”.

You can see above information gives us online payment option, name of the restaurant along with area, type of the food restaurant serves & finally the information about delivery charge & minimum order.  

All the restaurants in the list display information identical to above example, further information that you will find is of some number, don’t get confused, it is a count of reviews available for that place, by tapping on this number you can enter the review page for that particular restaurant.

Suppose you have “40 open restaurants” in your area then there will be 80 different lines, first will be the restaurant detail & next will be the review count.

You can read the complete restaurant list by scrolling up & down.

Using the “Search” button placed above this list helps you in finding specific restaurant & “Filter” button will apply filtering criteria to the restaurant list, for example you can filter the restaurant which provides free delivery.

Restaurants delivery menu screen:

                                                                

Now let’s select one of the listed restaurants & check the delivery menu for order.

You can double tap on the restaurant name to load a screen for your desire restaurant. I am going to select the joint called “Marush” from my locality.

As soon as you double tap on the desired name Food Panda loads the restaurant & talkback will announce “Downloading restaurant”.

Top of this restaurant screen there is a text “Delivery menu” & “Search” button to search the specific delicacy, next to this button there will be a name of the selected restaurant, below the name there is a list of menu available for delivery.

In my example of “Marush” I can see below options

“Shawarma-raps Veg”

“Shawarma-rapsNon-Veg”

“Kababbs veg“

“Kababbs non veg“

“Curries“

“Breads“

You can find similar kind of list in all the restaurants.

On Food Panda app, this list is identical to the hard copy menu card we get in hotels.

As per your requirement you can select any of the menus & you will see the delicacy’s under that category.

Navigation in the app is really straight forward, if you want to order gravy & roti then you can get into the related menu item, for rice, beverages, deserts there will be a specific category.

Menu specific screen:

For this example I will open the “Shawarma non veg” category.

As soon as we open any category, Food Panda will list all the delicacies under the same.

On this screen, there will be a list of available delicacies along with the ingredient details & price.

Next to each item there is “Add to basket” button which adds specified item into your order, you can read this complete list by scrolling up & down.

Now I will hit on “Add to basket” button for the item “Classic chicken shawarma”, as soon as we click on this “Add to basket” button, app adds the same item into your order, by default this process adds the  selected item with quantity as 1.

If your selected item needs some additional variation then app pops up a message box quickly, it is a list with some radio buttons with proper labels, in this case I got a message to select the shawarma type “Regular”, “Open” and there is a button at the bottom which says “Go to additions”.

You will have to tab on this button to proceed with your selection, this will show you the list of available  toppings, these additional toppings are always optional, you can choose your desired options or leave them as it is & hit on “Apply” button to finish your selection, this will take you  back to the item list.

Item which you have added using “Add to basket” button will now have additional text that is  “1X” and the total price, this 1X means quantity of that item, if you will hit on “Add to basket” button four times then it will show “4X” & the total price for that quantity.

In my case for “Classic Chicken Shawarma” talkback says “1x” & Rs. 145.

You can even go back to the restaurant menu page by navigating up for choosing more items. 

Ordering food using Food Panda app is highly accessible with Talkback as all the controls are labeled & all important screens are given useful titles, you can follow the same process to add your desired delicacies.

Opening basket screen:

After adding all the required item into the basket now it’s a time to open the basket & proceed with our order, to access your basket scroll towards the end of the screen, below the last item you will see some number, this number is nothing but a count of items added to the basket, in this case I can see number 1 at the bottom.

You just have to tap on this number to open your basket, as soon as you tap on this number app will calculate your basket & talkback will report the same.

Title of this new screen is “Basket”, if you are first time using this app then this screen will have “Log in” option otherwise it says “Log Out”.

Below this option there is total amount of your order, if your order amount is less than minimum order then app will show you a notification here.

This screen also has a short summary of your order along with the details like “Delivery charge” & “service tax”.

This basket screen allows you to edit your order, you can add/remove your items & you can even increase/decrease the selected quantity.

Also It has a checkbox which says “Replace my dish with similar one if my first choice is not available”, you can switch on/off this option as per your requirement & then tap on “Choose delivery type” button to proceed with your order.

Delivery mode screen:

Now on the next screen, app will show you 2 options, one is “delivery in 60 minutes” & another is “pick up ready in 30 mins”, in case of 1^st option, you just have to provide your address, for my order I will opt for 1^st option, bottom of the screen there is a button “Provide your details”, you just have to tap on it to go to the next step.

Address details screen:

If you are a first time user then this step will give you the small form to provide your address otherwise app will load your saved address automatically.

Address form is highly accessible hence you can fill in your desired address without any difficulty using talkback.

Bottom of this screen there is a button which says “Select payment type”.  Tap on it to initiate the payment process, this will take you to the payment option screen.

Payment mode screen:

On this payment screen there are 3 important options

PayTM wallet

Pay online.

Cash payment.

Please note, this third option is not available for all the restaurants.

This payment screen has a text box to enter the voucher code, if you have any voucher then you can put the same here, app will automatically recalculate the basket & it will show you the latest total of your order.

Now select your desired payment mode, for my order, I will go for first option that is “PayTM” as I observed that Food Panda always has some cash back offers for PayTM users.

After selecting desired option tap on “Go to online payment” button at the bottom, this process will open the next screen based on your choice, in my case I got the PayTM wallet login, I will enter my credentials & complete this payment to Food Panda.

After making the required payment Food Panda will take you to order status page & app will automatically refresh the status in a short time interval, immediately we get the instant SMS from Food Panda regarding our order confirmation & payment.

Food Panda will automatically popup a notification on this order status screen if agreed delivery time is crossed, in this notification Food Panda will ask you a question “Has your meal arrived?”

There will be two options, “Yes” & “No”, in case of “Yes” Food Panda will ask you to give your feedback on your meal & for “No” app will automatically raise a complaint on your behalf & Food Panda team will call you in 10 mins.

There was an incident in which I had to say “No” for late delivery of my meal & I instantly got a phone call from Food Panda.

Conclusion:

Above food ordering process seems lengthy to write down but you won’t believe it takes hardly 3 to 5 minutes as all the screens & controls are highly accessible with talkback. By following the above steps you can easily order your food using Food Panda.

I couldn’t cover all the features of thiss app  as its difficult in a blog but overall it’s an accessible solution for online food delivery.