Screaming at Alexa
Also known as my experience using Amazon Echo Dot
About a year ago, my husband decided manually turning on table and floor lamps was too much work. He populated the house with Amazon Echo Dots and Wemo Smart Plugs. Since then, it’s been a love/hate relationship between Alexa and me. Strong language? Well…definitely not love, but not as strong as hate; perhaps frustrating would best describe it. My husband can attest to this as he often hears screams of “ALEXA, OFFICE LIGHT ON! LIGHT ON! LIGHT ON!!!!!!! #@#$%!!!” coming up from upstairs.
I will try to limit the emotionally fraught nature of this post by framing this discussing around usability heuristics.
Learnability
My husband did all the setup and programming of Alexa so I can’t speak to whether that was easy for not. He told me which lights were accessible through Alexa and the voice commands associated with each light. All I had to say was “Alexa, ______ on.” The _____ comprised of living room light, office light, bedroom light, etc.
Easy enough right? Well, sometimes I would forget and would say office lamp instead of office light, and wait for the light to turn on, to no avail. Often times, I would just walk to the light and turn it on instead of waiting for Alexa to respond.
Finally he tired of my complaints and programmed Alexa to turn on with variations of room name light, lamp or just the room name itself— followed by ON or OFF. For example, “Alexa, office on” would turn the office light on.
And Alexa doesn’t just control the lights. You can ask her for the time, traffic, weather, jokes, etc. Just be prepared by the lameness of the jokes.
With regards to visibility and feedback, it’s well designed. Every time you say Alexa, the Echo Dot lights up and a short little sound plays. After it finishes a command, it says OK before going dark again. You just have to remember to pause after saying Alexa, so the Echo Dot knows you are talking to it.
Upon quick research, there are various indications associated with the lights on the Echo Dot. But really…who is ever going to go through the effort of remember what each variation means?
Efficiency
Is Alexa efficient? I guess it depends on whether the internet connection is fast enough. Sometimes, it would take a few seconds for Alexa to respond. However, most of the time, Alexa is instantly responsive.
But more importantly, is it helping me be more efficient? I think if I were to utilize Alexa as much as my husband does, it would perhaps be more efficient. To this day, 99% my interactions with Alexa is with regards to turning on and off lights.
But perhaps the fault lies with me. I am too lazy to learn all the functionalities Alexa and the Echo Dot are capable of.
Memorability
Alexa and Echo Dot aren’t really interfaces. They are a connected home system that doesn’t require much touch or visual interaction.
In terms of voice interaction, the only thing I had to remember was whether it was “light” or “lamp” that activated the lights. And that became a nonissue when my husband added a few different settings to ensure just saying “office ON” would turn the office lights on.
Errors
Here is perhaps my biggest usability gripe with Alexa and Echo Dot. Alexa has some error messages, such as “Sorry, bedroom light isn’t responding right now, try again later” built into it. However, most of the time, when it fails, it wouldn’t indicate why. The “action completed” sound plays, or Alexa says “OK”, but then nothing happens. Sometimes I would shout “ALEXA! LIGHTS ON/OFF.” Other times, I would move closer to the Echo Dot, hovering over it, and then voice the command. If after two or three instances of a combination of shouting and moving closer fail, I would manually turn the light on or off.
When my parents came to visit me, I showed them how to turn on the lights using voice command. They could not get it to work, even with purposeful enunciation. Their English is far from perfect; it’s hard for them to pronounce R sounds (there isn’t an R sound equivalent in Mandarin). So, simple commands such as “bedroom on” was rather difficult for them. They were also really confounded by the name Alexa.
Parents (in Mandarin):
“Why did Amazon name it Alexa?”
“Alexa is such a weird name.”
“Why can’t you just use a monosyllabic name like John?”
“Why are you guys so lazy?”
“Stop wasting money on this!”
I understand why Amazon can’t just use a name like Bob or John to activate Echo Dot. If they did, imagine the amount of complaints they would receive from households with occupants named Bob or John. However, I don’t think Amazon really thought about those users whose primary language isn’t English. I even find myself having to enunciate better when speaking to Alexa. I know Amazon —and others in the connected home/voice activation/interaction space—is working on incorporating accents. Perhaps in the near future, this won’t be a problem.
On a funny side note, Alexa is very attuned to its own name. Sometimes, when listening to podcasts or watching videos, a name that sounds like Alexa (Alex, Alexis, other variations of Al and ah) would play from my speakers and Alexa responds.
Another funny (sightly annoying) error: Alexa often thinks I want it to play music. It’s actually kind of amusing (until I tell it to stop and it doesn’t). Since having Alexa in the house, there have been a handful of times when it would turn on and say some stat about a song and start playing the song.
Finally, Alexa has a hard time differentiating between my voice commands and whatever background noise is going on. I often play podcasts, usually when I am doing something mindless. For example, I would play podcasts on my phone while washing dishes and then come up to the office with the podcast still playing. Upon entering the office, I would want to turn on the office lamp while still listening to the podcast. But Alexa doesn’t hear me. So, for those instances, I would need to pause my podcast and then tell Alexa to turn on the office light. Or, when the podcast is really good, I would walk over to the floor lamp and turn it on. It’s not really an error; more of an area for improvement.
Satisfaction
I can live without Alexa; it hasn’t drastically improved my life. If anything, I would say Alexa has made me more angry. Because I know it’s not a real human being, I often resort to yelling at it. And if not yelling, I find myself saying “Alexa, stop!” because it is so extremely sensitive to its name. It doesn’t recognize the context in which sounds like “Alexa” are uttered.
Once, and perhaps I imagined this, I think it even talked back to me! I think it said something like, “yelling at me isn’t going to make me work any faster.”
So…no, I would say I am not entirely satisfied with Alexa. Although that instance of sassiness was somewhat pleasantly surprising.
