May 14, 2020
People Have Asked to Set Their Alarms in 3000 Different Ways
This Voicebot.ai podcast provides ten short interviews from the CES conference. At the 22:01 mark, Bret talks to XAPPmedia’s Pat Higbie who discusses how speaking to voice apps is so much different than a human-to-human conversation. Among Pat’s comments were these:
– According to a panelist at CES, there are 3000 ways that people have asked to set alarms. So it’s difficult to predict how humans will ask for even a simple function to be performed.
– With voice, you are giving a simple command for an area that has a complex syntax
– Every time someone tweaks their voice app to accommodate new ways that human can ask for something, you run the risk that break what you’ve built. Some you have to be mindful of your existing syntax,
– Right now, there’s a lot of information out there about good design but not a lot about the engineering necessary to pull it off. In essence, there currently is a lack of engineering talent that knows how to deal with complex syntax
– Multimodal use of voice is rising and there’s a lot of work still ahead for that too. Providers will have to account for those using screens – and those not using them – when they design.