Pitstop

Increasingly, these days, as I read more, think and talk about bots, and use them, I am starting to think that bots are probably a transition step to a glorious “finish line”. The destination seems to be continuous, invisible technology in our lives. Kind of like the one depicted in the movie Her. Amazon’s Alexa is merely a trailer to that future.

Bots feel like a pitstop taken by technologists after a long, exhausting and great round of mobile apps & websites. Conversational products feel like technologists’ way of refuelling and taking a break from apps. The “break”, in this scenario, is a permanent one. Furthermore, it’s both emotional and technological in nature. We need to develop a mindset for using invisible technologies. I, for one, despite being tech savvy, would rather not use voice assistants. Yet. And, we also need to recharge our arsenal by stocking up on new technologies and infrastructure to make it to the future.

Conversational products seem to be a pitstop that marks the transition from a lot of UI to a lot of UX or no UI. Bots cut down on the conversational UI and are predicated on new UX.