Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma, explains why Waymo is his favorite current consumer product, pointing to its UX cues and default safety features.
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“The consumer product right now that I love is Waymo, but it's more kind of the physical experience of it. I mean, part of it is obviously just how impressive it is in making you feel incredibly safe in something that, like, didn't seem plausible, and all the little cues that they have in the product that kind of make you feel they are on top of it, and just even the attention to detail, like, there's a biker coming by, like, before you open the door, or stuff like you leave your bag, you know, they'll let you know as you're walking away, right? Stuff that A driver could do, too, but it's just the default, and I think its ability to kind of, like, make the average experience the best experience, almost, because of that tension to detail is just really something.”
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