Voice and VX Article Roundup (Week of July 24, 2017)

Bryan Sebesta
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

For my own benefit, and the benefit of my friends interested in Voice Experience, I’m starting a roundup of interesting articles or resources on voice and Voice Experience (VX) design that I come across. Not all of these articles are necessarily from the past week, but most will be going forward.

The Voice Enabled Revolution

Jerry Lu’s thesis: “voice will be the user interface of the future.” He has a convincing case to make, with a very good point to make at the outset about how fast we type and how fast we speak, read, and listen. (Spoiler: we can do the latter way faster than the former.)

Perhaps the most important reason to read the article is the survey of the voice technology market he’s produced, an excellent look at virtual assistants, voice-enabled hardware, enterprise functions, industries, accessibilities, and platforms / core technologies. It’s the best birds-eye view I’ve seen. Jerry Lu is most fascinated by developments in the underlying platforms and core technologies, and goes on to identify opportunities for entrepreneurs and voice concerns about privacy in voice. Definitely check out the article.

Amazon’s Alexa Has A Data Dilemma: Be More Like Apple or Google?

Thus far, I have only designed for Amazon’s Alexa platform. This article makes a point that Jerry Lu brought up in his just-mentioned article: what to do about consumer privacy? As per the article:

Citing three unnamed sources, The Information reported this week that Amazon is considering whether to provide full conversation transcripts to Alexa developers… The potential move by Amazon underscores how it is caught between two worlds with its Alexa assistant, especially in regards to privacy. By keeping transcripts to itself, Amazon can better protect against the misuse of its customers’ data and avoid concerns about eavesdropping. But because Alexa already gives developers the freedom to build virtually any kind of voice skill, their inability to see what customers are saying becomes a major burden.

The article goes on to expand how this dilemma is akin to Apple and Google’s policies: Google is much more open, allowing developers to see full transcripts for any conversation on their devices, while Apple is a “black box”–it provides no data, “not even for basic things like how many people use voice commands to access an app, or which voice commands are most commonly used.”

As someone who thinks a lot about my privacy, but is also in the position of a developer, I can understand how real this dilemma is. Where do you stand? Take a read.

69% of Voice Assistant Device Owners Encourage Friends to Buy One

This is significant, especially in light of a previous report that indicates two additional statistics:

  • Voice-enabled speaker usage is set to grow by 130% this year
  • Amazon controls 70% of the voice-enabled speaker device market

The physicist Albert Bartlett, speaking in a very different context, once said that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” If the above statistics are true, Amazon is going to become harder and more difficult to move–with many thanks to the exponential growth due to evangelizing. Of course, with players like Google and Amazon in the competition with the vast billions they possess, you never know. As one reviewer of the Google Home has pointed out, Google has twenty years of search to their advantage. I’d add that they also have a formidable user-base already invested in their ecosystem (such as myself). The competition here will be fierce, and that will be good for us: competition breeds innovation.

These are just a few of the recent articles I’ve read this week. If you have any recommendations, please leave them below.

Bryan Sebesta

Written by

UX and VX Designer at RAIN.agency in Utah. Also, chocolate connoisseur and bibliophile.

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