My point is that there are a lot of really good use cases for Voice or Type commands, but a lot of them are really inconsistent or unpolished, I love how I can say "Play HipHop" and magically it will look for my Spotify's HipHop playlist and play it, but it's unpolished because it'll play the songs in a different order than how it would be played by opening the playlist manually, and it's inconsistent because if I ask the same command in the search bar it will look on google's "Play Music" instead of Spotify. It feels like they are working really hard in the backend, but too little in the frontend (if we can call it like that).
In a home, I do totally get it. If it wasn't for the always listening microphones, I'd be up for it. But even then... I might ask my house to do something, I'm still going to manually want to type this comment.
Voice recognition when I’m out and about don’t want to get my phone out it’s for the best use for it for me but as this text shows voice recognition isn’t very good you had even indoors
IDK what the eventual VUIs look like, but I have a feeling were still at the discovery phase. Even operating GPS/calls/music via voice while driving is still awkward. In a car you have privacy, quite and a need to keep hands and eyes free. It should be the ideal environment for VUI.
Personally, I'm curious to see more voice used as an additional input to existing UIs, the way mouse, keyboard & touch are currently used simultaneously.
I can’t just ask it what the last couple episodes of a podcast are, have it tell me, and say OK play the second one. Or transparently even handle nav without fiddling.
Voice recognition has gotten decent—though it’s better with Alexa’s directional microphones. NLP and taking associated actions is still pretty bad.
Voice recognition and very simple NLP have gotten good pretty fast, and is still improving fast. That's necessary but not sufficient for a good UI.
The interaction model just isn't good enough yet. We probably need a podcatcher app to be built for voice-first, in order to discover the right UI.
If you really want this to work, we can install infrastructure at public places that can cooperate with your personal devices to improve your experience dramatically.
Think directional microphones and user tracking cameras that listens to you and watch your surroundings for you.
That way, you can have actual assistant as the infrastructure can be very knowledgable about the environment that's installed. For example, it can know how full the trains in the tube are and direct you to the optimal door, it an know the exact exit, it can know the wending machine and what it offers.
Suddenly, you will have voice UI to an intelligent assistant. Probably will feel as if it is a general purpose AI since it will be specialised for every location and occasion.
Maybe it can works as a subscription service where you gain advantage in crowded places against those who don't have a subscription or maybe it can be a public service and optimize the crowds movements and actions to improve productivity. Either model sounds dystopian but I would argue this is the direction we are headed to.
This would eliminate the bandwidth and privacy issues a voice UI has while allowing to keep the hands on the keyboard for working the cli.
It would be interesting if someone could come up with a list of interface challenges that voice could solve best.
One that I would like to have is a writing platform/software that is entirely functional with voice. Something of a similar nature: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Quick-Quotes_Quill
At work, we isolate the frequent-phoners from those who have to concentrate for prolonged periods of time. If more poeple start talking at work, the distractions are going to get worse.
There will always need to be a second screen- or keyboard-based UI. That doesn't mean voice won't be hugely important, but it does mean it'll never be the whole story. Consequently, I don't see it being 'the future' of UIs.