Are You Going to Touch That?
VoiceSignals #17 — Musings on Voice tech news
In a world where social distancing and avoiding touching surfaces is the new norm Voice-activated technology should be an option.
Most of the things we touch, when we go outside, are digital appliances and we touch them in order to get something done. Touchscreens on ATMs, keypads on ticket terminals and POS systems, buttons on elevators. Every day we go out of our homes an essential touch interaction can endanger us, regardless of wearing or not gloves; face touching is involuntary. But we still need to withdraw money from ATMs, pay what we buy, and hopefully in the near future collect our boarding pass, purchase a ticket in the metro, find information at an info point, and use our mobile without having to disinfect it because we’ve touched so many other surfaces. Maybe it’s time to discuss the proliferation of voice-activated connected devices, not just IoT.
While retro-fitting every single device and appliance for a zero-touch experience might not be feasible today, manufacturers need to learn from this pandemic and re-design their appliances to serve a new necessity. According to scientific evidence, we might not be safe until a vaccine is found and that could take several years. We should, also, not ignore that this is not a hypothetical case anymore… it’s real and it could happen again. Using voice controllers — like Amazon Echo, Google Assistant or other speech-enabled devices to manage legacy non-connected appliances like air conditioners, heating systems, television sets, home appliances, and our mobiles are already here. We just need to broaden the use of speech recognition to appliances outside our home, in public spaces, in factories, in workspaces, where touch might not be the safest option to interact. Before someone argues people are not ready to use their voice to control devices, we would argue that if this pandemic has taught us anything it’s that humans can adapt easily to change when their life is in danger. People can learn to use their voice to control devices as long as we give them the right guidance(UI/UX). Businesses can include voice-controls, as an option, in their product design making sure they’re compliant with security and privacy regulations.
The lockdown, enforced by most countries in order to protect their population, taught many brick-and-mortar retailers — without an online commerce website — that it is hard to survive if you are not prepared for the digital expectations of your consumers. This applies to all businesses. People are now looking for safer ways to conduct their day-to-day routines. According to an article by IoT World Today and a 2018 report by Pindrop, 85% of companies surveyed plan to deploy voice-activated technology for customer interaction. Of managers responding, 88% say they believe voice-activated technology can create competitive advantage, with 57% agreeing it would make the enterprise more efficient.
Now, these managers have more reasons to speed up voice-activated technology integration. Voice is safer.
Live Webinar
Topic
2 Ways Behavioral AI Can Help You Increase your Collections
Description
Let’s face it. We’re living in unprecedented times and no one can predict what’s in store for all of us in the coming months. It is safe to say, though, that a global recession is imminent and, if the last financial crisis is any indication, we can expect a significant resurgence of non-performing loans.
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Details
May 7, 2020, 02:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)
What we read online…
Why Emotion AI Is the Key to Mental Health Treatment
Professors Shri Narayanan and Alex Potamianos write about Emotion artificial intelligence (emotion AI) and how it can give health care professionals another option for supporting their patients. In the U.S. alone, approximately one in five adults — 43.8 million in total — will experience mental illness in a year. Sixteen million adults will experience at least one depressive episode. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death, claiming more than 47,000 lives in 2017. In the face of these incredible numbers, mental health professionals are looking at a revolutionary new technology to help combat mental illnesses.
Read here >
Can Voice have Emotional Intelligence?
Studies have shown that voice-only communication enhances empathic accuracy relative to communication across senses. On this episode you’ll hear Rana Gujral, the CEO of Behavioral Signals, talk about why voice-only communication is so accurate, how the company is focusing on the how of what’s being said instead of the what, how machines can be emotionally intelligent, plus how the company is helping businesses create better experiences for its users. Listen here >
