Voice is a technology inflection point.

As Alexa Skills development ramps up, I admit to only being this excited about technology twice in the last 25 years:

1. Browsing the web for the first time.

2. Using a mobile browser for the first time.

Unless you grew up with either technology, you probably remember that feeling too. On each occasion, you experienced a totally different way to interact with a computer and retrieve information. You felt different, your mind engaged, racing through the possibilities & ramifications.

You thought “wow, this is going to change everything”. It’s definitely going to change how we interact with computers — what we consider friction.

The way Amazon has implemented Alexa showcases why 100% voice interaction is a major disruptor and connects with people on a totally different level:

First, you’re interacting intelligently with a computer without touching it…. without even looking at it. No screen, no button, no touch. This isn’t the experience most people know from Siri or Google Assistant. It’s different and it’s totally liberating.

As a result, your body physically feels different.

Remember the first time you browsed the web on a smartphone as you walking around the office? You could feel your legs again, you were walking, unshackled from the desk. It felt amazing !

Until, that is, we swapped the sub-optimal ergonomics of a desk for a life walked hunched over, squinting at a small screen.

With 100% voice interaction, it feels natural. It’s glorious to walk around the home again. (And no longer will your children have to see their parents engrossed in their phones instead of their lives. ) Hell, you could even have a workout.

Second, if that weren’t enough — it’s mentally a more natural experience. Speech is the most basic of human communications — this stuff engages us deeper. Enough said.

Finally and most exciting for developers and companies, applications & services can be built with personality:

• People don’t speak in the way the formal, corporate way that most companies write on their websites. UX professionals and writers will be forced to write more personably.
• Humour works — users are no longer subconsciously reading ahead on a webpage, ruining the punchline.
• You can program a variety of responses to make this more ‘human’ and less repetitive.

The opportunities to surprise and delight are endless.

In short, people are going to enjoy interacting purely by voice. Contrary to all of the AI fear-mongering of the media, this can be a more natural and human interaction mechanism for many use cases.

No, voice won’t kill screens. In the same way that the smartphone hasn’t killed desktop computing. (And the Alexa Show demonstrates the value of both working in tandem.)

But it will change our perception of what constitutes ‘friction’ and ‘simplicity’ when it comes to user-experience. If you work in Customer Experience or UX, take note.

No, it won’t happen overnight. Judging from the past, Amazon rolls out globally at a slower rate, if ever going beyond the more developed markets. But Google, Facebook & Microsoft have huge investments & platforms rolled out for the conversational user-interface and are on a major developer-outreach drive.

As Marc Andreessen says, “I don’t think there actually are bad ideas…They actually all seem to be good ideas. The reason I say that is they all seem to actually happen at some point. It’s a timing issue.”

Given the rate of change right now, don’t wait too long.