zlacker

Don’t we have a general problem where voice interaction is primitive on all devices?

I use Siri and Alexa almost daily. I feel like we have a very long way to go.

>>mellin+(OP)
It’s funny watching Leo Laporte’s podcasts on twit.tv. He surrounds himself with those assistants. And despite having a crystal clear, radio voice all the devices either are triggered by mistake or ask him to repeat half of the time.

Now if you are doing a tech radio show, this has a high entertainment value. If you are busy, in the middle of something and need a task done, these repeated failed interactions are a complete non starter. Imagine a smartphone where the screen wouldn’t register a tap half of the time, it would end up in a bin very quickly.

Plus I am not sold on non self-discoverable UIs. Like I don’t remember the name of all the operas I have on my phone. It takes seconds to browse with a screen. Same things for the commands. If forcing users to learn by heart dozens of commands was commercially viable, we would still be using MS DOS! But GUIs are way more powerfull.

>>cm2187+Aa
GUI's are faster when you're near the device and don't have your hands full or when the command is complicated. But I have Echo's in various forms in most rooms now because while I also find discoverability an annoying issue there are plenty of commands that are obvious enough to learn quickly that work for the easy cases that you do all the time. A dozen or so commands covers maybe 90% of what I want it for.