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Alexa and Google Assistant Have a Problem: People Aren't Sticking With Voice Apps They Try (recode.net)
Amazon Echo and Google Home were the breakaway hits of the holiday shopping season. But both devices -- and the voice technologies that power them -- have some major hurdles to overcome if they want to keep both consumers and software developers engaged. From a report on Recode: That's one of the big takeaways from a new report that an industry startup, VoiceLabs, released on Monday. For starters, 69 percent of the 7,000-plus Alexa "Skills" -- voice apps, if you will -- have zero or one customer review, signaling low usage. What's more, when developers for Alexa and its competitor, Google Assistant, do get someone to enable a voice app, there's only a 3 percent chance, on average, that the person will be an active user by week 2, according to the report. (There are outliers that have week 2 retention rates of more than 20 percent.) For comparison's sake, Android and iOS apps have average retention rates of 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively, one week after first use. "There are lots of [voice] apps out there, but they are zombie apps," VoiceLabs co-founder Adam Marchick said in an interview.
I think maybe this problem is due to the novelty effect where it seems really cool to try it out a few times but after a while it doesn't seem like it makes life easier. Let's say you voice activate your lights despite having a light switch. I'm going to guess most of us have the light switch memorized so we'd hit it on and off even without looking or in the dark so changing to a voice activated system would likely slow you down. If you look at systems like Nest, they roughly figure out when you're home or not and then automatically adjust the heat and cooling to suit you. I'm sure the novelty would wear off if you had to tell it every time.
What they really need is "star trek" like sliding doors when it knows what you need before you even realize it. That would be awesome.
We spent decades tweaking the graphical user interface to make it easy and efficient. We have very little interface design experience with voice.
There is also a latency issue, at least with Google (no personal experience with Amazon, but I assume the same). That processing delay may be small on average, but it is extremely annoying---most especially when the internet is less than perfect, but also when it takes a very long time for no apparent reason.
Some feedback, like status indicators for internet and background noise may help.
The interface needs to mature. I don't think I can predict what that will look like. It is already extremely accurate, probably better than a human transciptionist, so this is more of an integration issue than a technical problem.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Of all the possible uses of Siri, "Siri Stop Navigating" when you are trying to pull into a parking lot at your destination and she won't shut up about making a U-turn is about the only use that we've found yet. Voice is great for a minuscule number of real life situations.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
No its not that. Voice apps require you to remember the keyword used to trigger them. On my Echo, I can't remember all the special keyword phrases and grammar I have to use to trigger an app.
I've found that the Echo is very useful for one unexpected thing: Kitchen timers. We cook a lot and being able to set and check timers hands free is invaluable. But the way you activate a timer is integrated into the system and very straight forward.
There, I said it.
It doesn't mean they're totally USELESS; no. For the majority of situations, they're more trouble than they're worth.
First, you have to be in exactly the right situation - there cannot be background noise or crosstalk - so essentially, a nearly SILENT room. How many of us spend a substantial amount of time in silence? I'm certainly not going to use a voice app on a bus, plane, or in public even if it was quiet, because anyone who does that is an obnoxious asshole.
Second, you have to know exactly the syntax the system is looking for. On my stupid car (BMX x5) it has voice activation but I'll be damned if I can ever remember what phrases it wants. "CALL HOME" (doesn't work, oh yeah, have to kick it to the phone menu) "PHONE" phone connected "CALL HOME" many results pick one.
Sigh. Oh, and my wife's name is Dawn, so fuck me if I don't have to sort through every damn "DON" in my phone book, distracting me away from the road while I do that - what am I *saving* using a voice app, again?
Third, you have to inevitably put up with a substantial failure rate. If I try to use a voice app for the simplest thing, dictating a slowly, clearly spoken text, I have to expect to spend the next few moments re-reading, editing, and correcting the text. If I'm trying to use it to come up with harder info - like names, in the example above - it's just a crapton easier to dial the number myself.
And I'm a Minnesotan (a region reputed to have a relatively clear style of speaking). I can't imagine how hard it must be for people with less intellgible accents.
-Styopa