On waking up…

How does a device communicate it’s ready for your input?

We talked about trigger words and getting ready, but how does a device trigger us to talk to it? A few observations:

• After “Hey Siri” and “OK Google”, there’s a quick chime to indicate that microphone is ready for input
• After “Alexa”, there’s a visual indicator to show that the device is ready for input. There’s also the option in Alexa settings to change this to a sound after wake up.
• In the Google Home concept video, the device also has a wake visual indicator, as well as one to prompt of a notification.

We had worked on different indicators for the Ubi. At first, it was a very computer like “Ready”:

Then, we went the more “traditional” route and added a double tone and made it more distinct so you knew it was the Ubi that was waking up.

However, as trigger word technology becomes more reliable, this wake up indication becomes less required. We’ll just assume that the device is working and always on and we’ll only require a negative indicator if something is wrong.