Alexa, What’s wrong?
I love Amazon Echo. And Alexa, Amazon echo’s brain, is poised to be embedded everywhere soon in all sorts of connected devices, apps, and services. I use it every day for basic requests mostly music, radio, turning on/off lights and kitchen timer. I am sure i am using only 10% of Alexa capabilities.
But boy, there are so many things, including elementary, that are still wrong with the Echo and Alexa in general. I will list them with no particular order but it is clear to me that Amazon can’t win if they don’t fix those
The painful setup. Pairing with the wifi could not be more complex. You have to pair your phone to Echo’s wifi and then connect to your wifi. It is simple to people working in Tech but not simple at all for most people. When you have experimented how Apple has solved pairing with the Airpods you wonder why the Amazon Echo has to be so cumbersome. Every modern wifi router have a WPS pairing feature: tap the button on both sides. Done.
International: if you re not American/in the USA Alexa has half of the interest. It is not possible to set a foreign location in settings (!!) making it impossible to have accurate weather forecast or traffic forecast. You can set the time zone curiously but that s it. Alexa does not understand foreign languages. Alexa does not understand accents. Alexa does not understand foreign words used in English (try saying “entrepreneur” in French…). Alexa can’t win if it stays US centric.
Alexa mobile app: there is no word to describe how bad and slow it is. Basically Amazon has built a wrapper of a web version of Alexa settings. But it does not behave well in a mobile app. It is sloooooooow, and not responsive. Alexa deserves a world class fast mobile app. How great will it work as an SDK if the basic mobile app is a second class citizen?
Skill discovery: Amazon has to completely rethink how skill discovery works. Right now it s part of Alexa mobile app (See above). It is not possible to evaluate the interest of a skill without a real rich preview (in sound and not in pictures or text). Hint: Get Alexa to help me discover skills based on topics and illustrate how they work. There is no point in bragging about thousands of Skills if no one will ever hear about it. My guess is that 99% of Alexa usage right now sticks with 10 use cases for most people. update: Recode published a few min ago an article on the topic
Articulated Intelligence (not artificial intelligence): Alexa is good for elementary queries (eg play spotify). It’s ok. But will not be interesting for many people. But not good at all at sophisticated queries like subsequent queries (eg: what s playing? answer “michael jackson” > when was he born? “sorry i don t understand the question). Alexa has to work like a brain. It works like a first age calculator. Viiv (acquired by Samsung) showed the way. Alexa will have to behave like a human brain if it wants human to interact further with it.
Listening while playing music: it is one of the most annoying issues with the Echo. Once it plays music, echo listening sensors are not reactive any more. I found myself yelling “Alexaaaaaaaaaa stop playing (the damn) music!!!!” often. Many times without success. It is way faster to find the remote and stop the music that way (or even the slow Alexa amazon app…). Amazon has to work this out much better. it is an incredibly frustrating experience. Amazon should provide with any amazon echo multiple small connected microphones to place around the house. That would increase the experience instantly and save the yelling.
Podcasts? I don’t understand why Amazon has not built yet a skill to listen to podcasts simply. I know you can have some via Audible. but i don t want an audible account. Just give me direct access to podcasts built in.
Multiple users/profile set ups: we re several to use it in the house. each one with its preferences. Alexa should be able to know according to the voice who is speaking and adequately personalize the answers (and set up) based on the voice. I am sure this will come. But not today…For example i don t want my kids to access/modify my emails or calendar if they are connected to Alexa (and i did not precisely because of that). The Echo is a family device but it does not behave like one.
