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.

Comments

Energy

[InfiniteZero]

It's simple physics. Voice requires more energy than a few taps on the screen.

Re:Energy

[SeaFox]

It can also require you to be careful how you pronounce the request, and the exact phrasing you use. The devices may advertise themselves as "natural language" interaction, but understanding a phrase when pauses for commas and such come into play, or overcoming the speaker's personal accent or speech issues isn't that easy..

Re:Energy

[ZecretZquirrel]

They also require a level of privacy that your finger does not.

Re:Energy

[jellomizer]

Not energy. But privacy and respect for others. Voice interface is popular in TV because it help move the plot. But in real life like translucent displays. Even with technology working perfectly just get in the way of civil life.

Re:Energy

[suso]

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.

Re:Energy

[Maxo-Texas]

Nope. I treated hundreds of people who were (and are) messed up from typing and mousing for a living. And I've also fixed them when they had tablet neck (from hanging their head over the tablet), and messed up shoulders, and messed up thumbs and fingers (from texting.)

There are entire manuals for my practice that have techniques to fix specific problems from specific activities and I train regularly to find new methods.

If you over use a tiny muscle- it will go into spasm. And in many cases, guarding will cause a cascade across related muscles.

Another poster said it was age and that is partially true. But I've had clients who were in their young 20's who were in severe pain from overuse. If it's bad enough that I can't fix it- then they go to the doctor and it takes a shot to fix it (and each subsequent shot is less effective so you have a lifetime limit on how many times that will work).

When we are young we have excess capacity, we haven't calcified yet, and we heal quickly when we do damage ourselves.

In the rare case that it really is carpal tunnel, you really need to back off or get surgery (tho if you keep abusing it, it will come back in a year or two). But in many cases, it's simply that part of a muscle seized up. our muscles are meant to be contracted and released. They are not meant to be held contracted for long periods of time. One of the crazy injuries i encounter is cell phone arm. Just from holding a cell phone up to your ear for too long. Can cause a knot in your lower bicep that won't let go.

Re:Energy

[Mouldy]

Even then it gets mixed up between timers and alarms. Eg,

Me: "Alexa, set an timer for 10 minutes"
Alexa: ..sets a timer that will beep in 10 minutes
Me: "Alexa, how long is left on the timer"
Alexa: "10 minutes"

Seems fine. But if you do;
Me: "Alexa, set an alarm for 10 minutes"
Alexa: ...sets a timer that will beep in 10 minutes
Me: "Alexa, how long is left on the alarm"
Alexa: "There are no alarms set"
Me" Alexa, how long is left on the timer"
Alexa: "10 minutes"

It will set a timer when you say "alarm" in your sentence but it won't be able to read back how long is left using the same keyword.

The AI capabilities of Alexa have been oversold. There is no underlying AI here that understands alarm and timer to mean the same thing sometimes or different things other times. The limitation is in the programming of the built-in timer & alarm skills; they weren't built with enough sample utterances and therefore makes the user speak Alexa's language rather than Alexa actually understanding speech.

I find myself using the physical dial on my stove to set timers more often than not because I find it quicker to do that than remember what the exact incantation my echo expects me to say.

My girlfriend tries to talk to it like a human - because it's advertised as that's how you use it - and she gets frustrated with it;
Her: "Alexa, what year did beauty and the beast come out"
Alexa: "Sorry, I didn't understand the question"
Her: "Alexa, what year did the beauty and the beast film come out"
Alexa: "Beauty and the beast will be released in March 2017"
Her: "Not that one, the original"
...
Her: "Alexa, not that one the original"
Alexa: "Sorry, I didn't understand the question"
Her: "Alexa, when did the original beauty and the beast film come out"
Alexa: "Beauty and the beast will be released in March 2017"
Her: *rage*

The whole experience is pretty jarring. I think it's going to be a long time before we have a home assistant that's actually helpful & easy to use.

Shocking!

[grasshoppa]

Do you mean to tell me that gimmicks have no longevity?

Craziness.

Re: Shocking!

[grasshoppa]

A voice activated 3D TV with a built in betamax player.

We'll own the market.

Maybe voice activation is overrated?

[foxalopex]

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.

Re:Maybe voice activation is overrated?

[cayenne8]

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.

Kind of like those automated doors at the grocery store that automatically open for you??

;)

Re:Maybe voice activation is overrated?

[JanneM]

BTW, the part about knowing who's going to use the door and who isn't is probably doable with cameras and enough processing power.

It is possible, and it has been built. A couple of colleagues in Sweden did just that for one manufacturer, more than fifteen years ago. The idea was to reduce the amount of heat lost from unnecessary door openings in winter, and to a lesser extent from cooling losses in summer.

It would recognize who was aiming for the door versus those that just walked past. It wasn't fooled by dogs or kids (would open for kids, but not dogs) or things like suitcases or prams. During development they built a version that would only open if you did the Vulcan hand sign thing.

But it was too expensive. Automatic doors are not a high-margin business - there's many competitors - and the actual savings did not make up for the higher price. The actual energy losses are pretty minimal for most shops, and door openings are usually not in error. Those that have a real problem with it tend to use revolving or double doors already.

Also, it didn't help that the shops might have needed permission to mount what is effectively a camera pointing out on the street.

Today the hardware would be cheaper, and cameras are far more acceptable. But from what I heard customer interest would still be small.

Not surprising, really

[EndlessNameless]

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.

Re:Not surprising, really

[thinkwaitfast]

GUIs have been getting worse in the last few years. Sometimes significantly so.

Not surprising

[OneHundredAndTen]

Currently, these so-called "intelligent assistants" are little more than toys. You play with them for a couple of days, they are kind of fun, but then the novelty of the toy wears off. They are OK when it comes to rather specific questions, and all but useless for issues that require a minimum of intelligence.I expect that, one day, they will live up to their name. As of today, they are toys.

Siri Stop Navigating

[Princeofcups]

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.

When would I use this?

[irrational_design]

I am almost never in a place where I would feel comfortable talking aloud to me phone. Should I get up and go somewhere private to talk to my phone, or just stay here and use the screen? Hmm, that is such a tough decision.

Re:When would I use this?

[JohnFen]

I am almost never in a place where I would feel comfortable talking aloud to me phone.

I wish more people felt like you. The number of people talking to their phones in public places is getting annoying, but still not quite as annoying as people who have speaker phone conversations in public.

Re:When would I use this?

[cayenne8]

While driving it is almost useful?

I dunno, I don't mess with the phone in my car, I'm too busy concentrating on driving.....and jamming to what's on the stereo....and trying not to spill my beer.

Reliability

[BradleyUffner]

Voice control is still too unreliable for me. About half the times I try to use it, I end up repeating myself with different variations, trying to get the exact right phrasing it wants. I usually end up having to do it manually anyway. I might as well just skip those step and go right to the finger.

When it works right the first time, it's like magic, but that is so rare.

Re:Reliability

[Weirsbaski]

My car uses voice-recognition to pick songs on the MP3 player. One time I told it to play "When I First Kissed You", and it started playing "Two Steps From Hell".

I think my car is going through a bad break-up with the Chevy down the block.

Voice apps are stupid

[xtal]

Voice to text is handy in a bunch of situations now. Mostly when I want to send someone a message when I'm walking or typing. It's sort of neat for appointments, and I use it all the time for setting a timer. ..on my phone.

Screens and keyboards, or touch devices, are remarkably effective at conveying large amounts of information almost instantly. Voice is not an efficient medium. Do you know why people hate voicemail? Because it's slow and ineffective.

Voice apps will be the next 3DTV, which should have been clear to everyone wasn't going anywhere. If you have to put on goggles, it might as well be a VR headset..

In the meantime, I can order from Amazon from my tablet in a few seconds, deal with issues and confirmations, while I'm watching Netflix on my 65" regular 2D TV.

Cooking

[Carcass666]

When I am in the kitchen, I use Echo to set timers (very useful), play/change music and do news briefings and stuff like that. Using a touchscreen when you are working with meat or baking is a pain.

Re:Cooking

[citylivin]

sending all your conversations to amazon in the cloud is easier than using your stove timer which is washable?

what an age to be alive!

I could get behind smart voice recognition (i loved via voice back in the day), however the fact that it records everything youre saying all the time, and sends that data out to the internet, is extremely creepy! I don't know how people get around that mentally.

Best not to think about it i guess.

Re:Cooking

[Carcass666]

It does not record everything that is said all the time. It does listen all the time for keyword recognition, and Amazon (along with Google) store recordings that you can go in and delete, but most people don't. Wired has a pretty decent write-up. Can I prove that Echo doesn't record all speech, even when not activated? I've looked and don't see any outbound traffic when it's not activated. I suppose it could be recording stuff surreptitiously, and sneaking out the compressed voice data it's been recording all day during the brief times it is activated, but that compression would have to be really good.

Unless you do all your browsing with Tor, and use something like Lavabit for your email, if you do any commerce online, plenty of people know lots about you. Yah, Amazon knows I like to set timers, and I like to ask for the weather and news. It knows that I skip music tracks on Spotify, along with my schizophrenic taste in music. These are the least of my privacy challenges.

Oh, and my stove, it has one timer at a time, which is limiting when you are dealing with a major meal.

The problem is what you consider useful

[fyngyrz]

When I can say from my couch "Alexa, make me a steak, medium rare, and bring me a beer, IPA" and a robot hands me a beer in 1 minute and a plate with a hot steak 18 minutes later, I'll give a shit and I think other consumers will, too.

Reasonable enough. Other than the stock capabilities (weather, time, shopping list, timers, alarms, "what's playing at the movies?", "what's the phone number for Tire-Rama?", oodles of music sent to the theater system), the only third-party capabilities we use regularly are:

o Adjust the lighting via TP-Link smart plugs
o Adjust the heating / cooling via Sensi smart thermostat
o Check Fitbit stats / progress

Is it worth $49 or so out the door, plus hardware cost for associated devices to be able to do all this without having to otherwise go and do it? Well, it is to us.

For instance, sitting in the theater, it's either get up, make a 20 foot walk to the light switch, flip the switch, a 20 foot walk back in the dark, and sit down again, or just say "Echo, Turn off the lights." Likewise, when the show is over, it's just "Echo, Turn on the lights."

But when it'll cook a meal, see it delivered to the table, even see that the dishes are washed... yeah, that's going to be a fine day. At consumer prices, I'd hazard a guess that's still five or six years off.

Re:The problem is what you consider useful

[mrchaotica]

Wake me up when there's software that runs on my own local server and can do all that without telling Amazon or Google all about my shopping preferences, schedule, movie preferences, lights, heat, and level of fitness.

Re:The problem is what you consider useful

[0100010001010011]

Consider yourself woke.

https://jasperproject.github.i...

http://lucida.ai/

Alexa

[hackingbear]

me: Alexa, why can't you just understand my question?

alexa: Sorry, I don't understand this question. Please check out the list of questions I can understand on the App.

Because voice apps are, by & large, stupid.

[argStyopa]

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.

Seems to me a device w/ a screen UI is better

[Streetlight]

If you're going to buy something, whether new to you or a "refill", a device with a screen is better. Lots of information is immediately available for a quick read. This includes things like price, choice of vendors, warranty, user reviews. Even for a repeat purchase, something may have changed since the last purchase. Even for music apps, looking at your playlists for choices or perhaps looking for something new to listen to and seeing where you are in an album or play list, a screen is better. A weather app has far more information on screen than just one answer from one of these verbal only devices. The results of a search using a search app give many selections on screen to figure which might be the best result for what you want. I'm sure readers here can give many more examples where a device with a screen is far superior to one of these tube shaped so called AI based smart devices.

Because it's annoying

[XXongo]

And they're really annoying when people around you are using them.

It's one thing when everybody you see is bent over their phone tapping away and ignoring everything else in the world. But it's a lot worse when they're talking at their phones.

Re:Because it's annoying

[HiThere]

Sorry, but people talk to their phones, their cars, etc. all the time. Hell, they even talk to light switches "Why won't you turn on you stupid switch!".

Re:Because it's annoying

[brantondaveperson]

This is because no-one uses those things unless no-one else is around, because it's socially weird.

Re:Maybe because they are useless.

[NominalLoss]

I couldn't disagree more. I bought Google Home 2 weeks before my first kid was born. It has been awesome in that use case. Holding a screaming kid and want to update your shopping list? "Hey Google, add milk to shopping list." Meanwhile, my wife gets the update instantly on our shared Google Keep shopping list while at the store. Want to know if that eye crusty is something to be concerned about? Ask Google. I have Phillips Hue in every room in my house... 2 A.M. the baby needs to be changed - "Hey Google, set nursery lights to 40%." Bam, I can carry the kid in and change her diaper without having to fumble a kid and the light switch WITH the lights at the right brightness to not tick her off. I love my Google Home and its not for gimmicks. I have my smart TV set up so I can say "Hey Google, turn on ESPN" - Google turns my TV on, changes the channel to ESPN and sets the volume to exactly what I want. With a little effort and IFTTT its absolutely fantastic. If you haven't explored the nooks and crannies its easy to think its gimmicky, but I love mine.

"An overhang in productive capacity"

[popo]

If you want to know what the precursor to deflation in a sector, or the broader economy is, it's referred to by economists as an "overhang in productive capacity".

It's when there's more productiion than demand. And .. it's bad. Really bad.

It's an indication that an industry or a society has jumped the shark, and investment has crossed the line into mal-investment by exceeding consumer demand.

That's where we are now.

We have too many app developers. Too many coders. Too many UX designers. Too many entrepreneurs seeking first-mover advantage on new platforms.

Along comes the Echo and *bang*... there's a glut before there was ever a "thing".

Historically and mathematically speaking what comes next is a withering of said capacity. It's not going to be fun.

The apps are buggy

[MobyDisk]

I used to use Google Assistant daily, and I liked it. Now I almost never do, because it is buggy, and it gets buggier with each release. It's highly accurate, *when it works at all*.

Voice recognition quality:
The voice recognition quality is stunningly accurate. It almost never gets things wrong. This is the hardest part, and they nailed it. But it seems like they had an intern write the rest of the code. Maybe it just wasn't exciting enough?

Speed:
My Galaxy S5, in 2015: "Okay google" *beep* "Send a text to..."
My Galaxy S5, in 2017: "Okay google" (45 second delay) *screen flash* "Send a text to..." (15 second delay)
This isn't just my specific phone, because my wife has the same model, but with almost no apps installed, and it performs the same way.

Bad parsing code:
If you give Google assistant a command that is more that some arbitrary limit, like 256 characters or something, it gets stuck in a loop.
I say "Okay Google, send a text to Harold Smith, saying that ... 2 paragraphs of text..." Google shows me the exact correct text I spoke, in a text box, then promptly says "Who do you want to send this text to?" Confused, I respond "Harold Smith" then it correctly finds the contact, then says "What would you like the text to be?" I say the text, it transcribes it perfectly, then says "Who do you want to send this text to?"

Bad contact lookup:
I say "Okay Google, send text to Dad" then it says "I cannot find a contact named Dad." Then I open my contact list, and there is a single entry named "Dad" with a cell phone number on it. Same spelling, same case.

No retry logic:
Sometimes it tells me something like "I'm sorry, I wasn't able to contact the server, please repeat that again." Why would I have to repeat it? Didn't it just record my voice? Other times, it actually transcribes the text, then tells me it couldn't contact the server. Ummm.... what? And it does that even if the action is local and doesn't require the server, like running an app or adding an appointment to my local calendar.

Must look down at the screen to use it:
On my iPhone, it would repeat back to me the message and prompt me to confirm. With Google Assistant, I have to look down at my phone and read it. I used my iPhone to send voice texts while on the road. I can't do that with Google Assistant since the whole point is to not have to take my eyes off the road.

Poor app integration:
After I send a text, it isn't in my text history.

lol

[fyngyrz]

Found the 1%-er.

No, you most certainly didn't. You found the guy who doesn't spend even a tiny fraction of what others do on children, booze, drugs, bars, travel, going out to eat, long trips, interest, hotels, sports events, video games, software, "apps", new cars, parties, education, or junkfood — and hasn't for quite a few decades now.

Which left me way more than enough to build a very nice theater into my home, the entire interior of which I built and wired by hand, after buying the property. Even with a modest income. Also, I bought the property with the specific intent of putting a theater into it - it was an abandoned church, a classic tabula rasa. Just a huge, empty room. And I had mucho help - my SO is awesome, and very much like-minded.

We each have our priorities. Home entertainment and at-home convenience are some of mine, that's all. In fact, almost every optional expenditure I make is in pursuit of a concrete, lasting improvement to my physical circumstance. If you don't have enough left over to do what you dream of by the time you're my age (I started this particular undertaking when I was 50, I'm 60 now), then you're Doing It Wrong.

Up till now, anyway. I don't know what's going to happen to the younger people going forward. Looking a good deal more bleak than it did for me.