How my habits changed after 3 months of using Alexa
If you are skeptical about the benefits of having a virtual assistant in your home, beyond what advertisements claim, here is an interaction designer’s honest opinion.
My ethical stand is not the point here, but…
I will start by clarifying that the point of this article is not for me to tell you whether you should or shouldn’t have an Amazon Echo in your home. My reflection abstracts from the heated ethical debate that you probably already have been part of. However, allow me to set the premise that, as a designer, I do think it is our duty to encourage technological development that protects humans, their safety, and privacy.
Innovation is a force that cannot be stopped, but it can be steered and we are slowly learning that asking ourselves “should we?” before “might we?” can spare us from short-sighted decisions and help us craft products that really are good for people.
So, if what you are looking for is a confirmation that Amazon Alexa is evil, you can jump to the bottom, where I linked some interesting articles that will help make yourself an informed opinion.
A self-reflection on my own interaction patterns and behaviors
So, what is this article about? It’s a straight and honest report of my journey as a user through the experience of buying, learning about, and adapting to a smart speaker. You could consider this a heuristic evaluation except that I honestly had no plan to write this article until after several weeks I had already started using the device. I hadn’t set for myself any evaluators, metrics, or KPIs. My experience has been rather instinctive and chaotic, much like a regular customer, slowly noticing the habit-forming power of this small piece of technology.
The tipping point
Like many people, I was wary of having an automatic recording device in my home, but for the sake of curiosity and also due to the fact that I was about to move into my very first apartment, living entirely of my own, no family, no roommates, no partner, a few months ago I did it! After navigating hours on my laptop, learning about all different types of virtual assistants, reading pros and cons lists, watching unboxing videos on YouTube, I came to the obvious realization that I was not gonna spend 300+ € for a HomePod just yet and I bought the cheapest smart speaker on the market, Amazon Echo Dot.
The very first things I did after connecting the device were:
- Changing the privacy settings to automatically delete my recordings after 3 months (the shortest time allowed by the app).
- Setting the name as Echo, instead of Alexa. I have to admit, I prefer to think of my robots as robots. Even though Echo is also a female name, it evokes less of an association with a real female human ready to answer my every command.
We’re good to go!
List of the features I keep using on a regular basis
After the first period of familiarization and discovery, in which I tried out different integrated apps, recommended features and Easter eggs, I found myself losing interest for most of those. I don’t deny that a smart speaker can be a useful device to interact with when you’re bored, to break the routine, to be entertained. However, the potential of a new technology lies in those features that replace our already established habits. If it succeeds in doing this, it means it is here to stay.
So, here is the list of the finalists that made it to the endgame.
- “Echo, turn on the radio”
You can keep your podcasts. Call me old-school, but I LOVE the radio. Digital stations are so much better and having it embedded in one device is just super handy. - “Echo, turn on Spotify”
Because sometimes the Italian radio is just not good enough. - “Echo, what’s the weather like?”
- “Echo, what’s the time?”
Late, probably late. - “Echo, turn down the volume. Echo… Echooo!!”
- “Echo, how many grams are 3 ounces?”
Why Americans? Just why? - “Echo, set a 10 min timer”
Just enough to keep it al dente. - “Echo, wake me up at 8 am”
More or less surprisingly they are all very banal everyday tasks that I absolutely did not need an Echo Dot for. I could easily keep doing each of those the way I did, tapping on a screen, pushing a button, moving my ass to the other room… But I didn’t. My brain seems to intuitively prefer to speak up and have the output delivered verbally. I developed a habit. Why so? Certainly, there is something about our tendency as humans to take shortcuts and optimize the way we perform tasks.
But even more interesting than understanding why a user changes the modality of performing a task is: how do different modalities of performing a task change the user?
So, to the designer who is trying to find an answer to the “should we or shouldn’t we?” question, here are my insights on why I am happy to keep using Alexa in my daily routine.
3 Key Insights
#1 — Voice forms habits, screens form addictions 🐇 🕳
What is the first thing you do in the morning? I use my voice to yell at my home device to turn the alarm off. This is something very small and it might sound insignificant, but I am glad I am spared an excuse to look at my phone that early in the morning. Because when I do, I know I will not just turn off the alarm and keep going with my life, I will fall straight into the rabbit hole of: reading my emails; answering my Whatsapp messages from last night; checking Instagram, and then it’s done, it’s over!
I go on with my day and similar situations keep occurring. Everything nowadays is condensed in one device. Our clock, our mailbox, our music player, our radio, our tv. Everything is in one place and the screen-time easily spikes up to 10 hours per day. Because every single thing we want to do is a reason to start doing another one, and then another, and then you end up scrolling posts you are not even looking at, just because it relieves the same anxiety that it causes you in the first place.
Voice, in this case, sounds like the type of good habit that does not break your flow, sucking all your attention the way a screen does.
#2 — Multi-tasking is possible if the tasks are different enough 🌤👗
This sounds like a paradox. Of course, you cannot play basketball while riding a motorcycle. What I want to say is: it’s simply impossible for the human brain to read from two books simultaneously, but it is possible to read a book while surrendering to your dog’s quest for cuddles. In fact, it can even enhance the experience.
I started developing the habit of asking my Echo Dot for the weather while I stood in front of my wardrobe trying to figure out what to wear. Very simply, looking at my phone required me to stop looking at my clothes. They were not two tasks I could do simultaneously. It may sound completely trivial, but understanding this principle can allow us to apply it to our advantage and change more meaningful habits. To mention an obvious and critical one: How do you make people stop looking at their phones while they are driving?
Whether you are designing for a slow lifestyle or for performance-enhancement, there is always a hierarchy of tasks that you need to respect. This is where voice may come in handy.
#3 — The benefit is being able to choose 👯♂️
You don’t always need to replace a habit completely. Sometimes, it feels natural to shift back and forth between two ways of doing the same thing, depending on the context.
Sometimes, I want to turn the volume of the music down and I simply go and push the button, be it the one on my connected phone or the minus icon on the Echo itself. Other times, I am washing the dishes and I suddenly hear the news are saying something I really don’t want to miss. Then why not let the user yell to turn it up, instead of partially drying their hands and frenetically dropping water all over the interface? Similarly, when I’m setting a timer I might not have the time to run around and look for my phone, that who knows where I buried (Oh right! It’s in my pocket).
Conclusion
Voice interfaces are still a technology that can benefit from a lot of improvement on many different levels.
Like briefly mentioned above, the privacy issue is no joke, and the least we can do, like Jason T. Voiovich recommends in this article is to be informed and understand what we are welcoming in our homes. It’s interesting to keep under the radar all the creative hacks that designers like Bjørn Karmann and Tore Knudsen came up with to make sure to keep our conversations really private, such as their parasite device Alias, but of course, this is more of a point of reflection than an ultimate solution.
Additionally, I will not deny my lack of sympathy with what clearly is a tendency to encourage gender reinforcement through female virtual assistants and Emily Lever seems to have an unambiguous opinion on why.
That said, when properly designed, the use of verbal interfaces can unlock world-changing capabilities, that will radically transform our relationship with technology. For the moment, I guess I will be contented with having some of my minor first world problems solved.
