Voice-control: how is it possible to compete against the GAFA?
With the launch of Echo, Amazon has taken the smart home market by storm with more than 1.6 millions of units sold in less than 2 years. Nobody, not even Apple or Google, had anticipated Amazon’s Echo tremendous success.
Apple pioneered with Siri in 2011, with its take on a voice-assistant. But as often with pioneers, Siri was far from perfect, failing to understand even simple messages, unable to deal with accents, and promising more than what the level of maturity of its own technology could really perform.
More importantly Siri suffered from two major flaws.
First, Apple underestimated the need of having a few clearly identified use-cases so people start using Siri on a daily basis. Willing to showcase how advanced was its technology, Apple promoted Siri as a voice-assistant able to perform almost any task: get movie information and reviews, find local restaurants, book concerts and events, get directions, answer factual question, or perform web search.
Unclear benefits plus a nascent technology: Siri has been mainly used to send text messages.
Secondly Siri was not hands-free. Siri was seen as an additional service of the smartphone, seen by Apple and all other tech giants as the cornerstone of our digital life. No smartphone. No digital life.
Yet Smartphone is both a keystone and a dead end.
Amazon imagined something completely different with Echo. Instead of adding a new service to its existing line up of products or developing an app for Android or iOS, Amazon decided to create specific hardware for its voice-assistant.
Smartphones are individual devices you use in public. Amazon Echo is a collective (family) device for private use.
No need to keep your phone in your pocket. No need to press a key to activate its voice-service. Accessible pricing. A great mix.
Amazon benefits from voice-recognition progresses made during the last 5 years. When Siri was launched, its accuracy was lower than 70%. It can now reach 95%.
Yet, is Amazon Echo perfect? Will Amazon Echo and Google Home take them all?
Before we try answering this question, let’s go back to 2014 and remember Jibo. Jibo was at the time, one of the most exciting crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo (more than $2 million raised). The campaign was also able to attract important VC rounds ($52 millions). Jibo has it all: style, voice-control, an attractive interface, and most of all, it conveyed emotions.
Yet where is Jibo now? Still not released on the market. Too many features, too complex to integrate, and most of all no targeted audience.
Now that many other products are launching on the market, how will Jibo react? Well, if they manage to clearly define what they stand for and select a primary usage, they can be extremely successful.
Google’s response to Amazon Echo with Google Home exploits one of Echo’s major weakness: it’s total lack of style. Compared to Amazon’s black-emotionless cylinder, Google Home fits into any home décor. Google Home also marks a kind of “philosophical change” for Google. The Company’s philosophy has been about quick access to information, not about personalities or conversations.
Nevertheless, both Google Home and Amazon Echo suffer from the exact same limitations:
- They both promise access to thousands of services, yet very few of them are useful. The first thing people do with Amazon Echo is to use a timer to cook their eggs (85%). Then they listen to music, they set an alarm or check time. Indeed, who’s willing to play Jeopardy every day?
- Both are one-way-speaking assistants. If you don’t ask, they don’t do anything. They are passive, rather than proactive. They shouldn’t be called assistants but actuators.
- They only rely on voice. Yet voice sometimes is not enough. You many need additional content (images, view) both for information purposes or to convey emotion.
- They are home devices. Intended to be used by anyone in the family. A collective product, not individual. Yet they are associated with a single account, a single calendar, a single set of preferences, a single music account. Thus not multi-user friendly.
Sometimes less is more.
With startups, or even a larger consumer electronics manufacturers, whatever its funding or quality of its team, there is zero chance going up against Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft (Cortona is the little name of their own to offer).
But would it even make sense to offer a similar product?
Creating a new product brings 3 questions to mind: Why people would pay for this product? How does it make life easier? What strategies to use so people keep using it (so it doesn’t end up on one of the garage shelves!)?
- Keep it simple: Promoting a new product is always energy-consuming. Engineering and promoting a product that addresses several needs, and targets several categories of potential users is nothing short of a nightmare. You ended up with a myriad of features while blurring what you’re offering and missing what’s essential to your core consumers. Your unique selling proposition must be obvious to understand. Not more. For example, Bonjour is a digital alarm clock designed to smooth your morning routine. Period. In product design, less is always better: it allows you to stay focus on your objectives, to refine all user scenarios, preserve development efforts to polish your user experience.
- Observe and identify problems: As reported in a recent Harvard study, your morning mood will affect your whole day. Those 60 minutes after wake-up are crucial. Before starting to design Bonjour, we spent more than a year studying people’s morning habits, and discovered common routines and common needs. For instance, we’re all checking a number of apps on our phones during the first half hour of our day.
- Make it personal: We are entering an era where electronic devices are able to match their behavior according to user habits thanks to data analysis, machine learning and AI. Passive devices such as Echo or Google Home fundamentally lack this ability. We are starting to see devices able to make suggestions before you even ask. Devices are able to anticipate your needs based on data coming from other devices or services. A companion that is able to check your fitness goals, your calendar, and the weather to suggest to wake up early for a morning run isn’t something of a distant future. It’s live today.
- Rely on visual archetype: People are eager to adopt a product if they instantly recognize what this product is designed for. Form follows function. Apple took great care of the Apple Watch clock face design so it look like a watch not a basic fitness tracker. Similarly, Bonjour looks like a familiar alarm clock.
- Think global user experience, not trends: Voice is a trending subject. It will clearly and deeply impact the way we interact with technology. But voice isn’t the holy grail. Sometimes voice isn’t enough.
But even more important, know what you stand for!
The name “assistant” implies personalization. This occurs by collecting a large amount of data about each individual user — from his voice (the way he says things), to what music he listens to, or what he controls in his house. His hobbies. Or his calendar.
Bonjour collects and analyzes personal data. They are solely used for the purposes of providing customized services. They will never ever be shared or sold.
This is fundamentally different!
The point of Amazon and Google assistants isn’t about making our lives better. It’s not even about making money selling their devices. It’s about controlling data.
Google has excelled at getting advertising dollars through search. But Facebook is challenging its model with a better set of advertising tools (we share so much data on Social Media). So Google needs more personal data to compete against Facebook. Google Home or Google Assistant exist for that single purpose.
Google is also directly challenged by one of its main customers, Amazon.
Amazon is great at attracting shoppers. If Amazon can precisely target our buying preferences, this will render ads useless: just ship me what I need. If its the wrong product, let me return it. Hassle free. Huge savings for Amazon plus increased turnover. Enter Alexa. Welcome Dot. Dash. Tap, etc.
Bonjour is live on Kickstarter. Its initial funding goal was reached in less than 8 hours. Since then several thousands of backers have joined Bonjour’s journey and shared this vision. Join now.
Bonjour. Friendly. Helpful. Smart.
Jerome Schonfeld & Greg Gerard — Holi founders
