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Comment by dchuk | Hacker News Reader

God I hope not.

Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do. Every single Voice UX I've used for input (Siri, Alexa, etc) is a fumbling around experience where inevitably I can find out the weather, turn on some music, and then hear some half-funny replies from the device because it doesn't actually know what to do. It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point.

Maybe Amazon is addressing this with their supposed Alexa with a 7" screen in the future.

What I want is improved Voice Output UX. I think Apple is trending towards this with the AirPods, where you can leave them in your ears all day and have Siri just talking to you, which is the only practical use of any of these things unless you're stoked about annoying everyone around you with your robot assistant awkwardly talking out loud all day.

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Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other.

Things said in our home all the time:

"Do you know what the weather is going to be like?"

"Is it going to rain today?"

"We need to buy some milk."

"The roast need one and a half hour."

We speak all the time with each other and there is nothing weird about that.

I bought a Google Home and it's literally transformed our lives in the little details for the better.

Before asking for the weather was something which required one of us to find the phone, open it find the weather app.

It sounds banal but if you have to do it every day because you take your kids to school believe me it's a godsend.

My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio.

My kids love talking with it.

And it's basically just a very practical assistant which is revolutionary in the little details not some sci-fi scenario.

It's not disrupting anything it's improving the quality of tech by allowing us to interface with technology in one of the ways which removes yet another layer of abstraction.

You don't need to know what the system can do as long as it can do enough Google Home certainly can and it's just getting started.

The general issue I have today is that, for a lot of things, voice can feel like an exercise in coming up with the right wizard's incantation--especially as you add Skills, etc.

But that's not really an inherent issue with voice. It's just that today's systems are mostly stuck with requiring relatively strict adherence to specific syntax. This will certainly improve over time.

I don't find Alexa as transformational as some people I know do but I find it useful enough.

Google Assistant is slowly getting better with stuff like this. While usually I stick with the commands and syntax I _know_ works, occasionally I'll try getting fancy and throw it a curveball by just speaking 100% naturally and Assistant will surprise me by actually doing what I intended.

For example, a while back I was using Assistant to look up showtimes for a movie at a specific theater, and just to see what would happen I said "show me a map" without giving any explicit context. I was expecting Assistant to come back with a search query or maybe pictures of generic maps in response, but to my surprise it actually understood that I was talking about a map of the theater and gave me that.

Of course, that specific response in that exact situation isn't in and of itself all that impressive, and for every time Assistant succeeds in figuring out what I meant in a situation like that there's maybe one or two other times when it has no clue, but the idea of being able to speak 100% naturally to a virtual assistant and having it "just work" is unbelievably cool.

Just to elaborate for those of us without kids...

As a parent in New England, you have to choose between 3 jackets and when you are trying to get socks on two kids and can ask "alexa, what's the weather today" and know the answer without having to pause and get a phone and let one of the kids escape, that's really nice.

Thank you for that. I was thinking; wait people actually care about the weather but this makes sense. As someone without kids, we have not checked the weather for over 10 years and so using that as an example 'what people talk about' sounded weird to me.

It is interesting how little we now need to think on the weather.

With modern heating systems (specifically thermostatic radiator valves) we no longer need to ensure that the heating is prepared at the right time, so we don't need to know the weather.

With the prevalence of tumble driers washing doesn't need to hang out, so we don't need to know the weather.

Most modern clothing is suitable for a very large range of temperatures and good waterproofs can be comparatively small and lightweight, allowing them to be brought everywhere without burden, so we don't need to know the weather.

Cars and roads have improved significantly, the impact of the weather on a small or long journey is often negligible, so we don't need to know the weather.

More jobs are performed indoors now and where they aren't special machines and tooling have been made that make the job easier alongside significantly reducing the risk and discomfort that weather can cause, so we don't need to know the weather.

There remain some situations where knowing the weather is very important, but very few of them affect 'the general populace' is a consistent enough manner to cause them to waste time following it.

Conversely, many jobs need to be performed on the schedule that was agreed upon beforehand regardless of the weather. The weather is rarely accepted as a legitimate source of everyday disruption and misery, except in extreme events.

Case in point, my area got 11" of snow overnight recently and my wife got yelled at for being late to work because subcompact cars don't do too well in the deep snow. So people end up buying SUVs that they drive year-round just for the 1% of the time when they're really needed.

So looking at the price difference... I'd buy a smaller car and tell my boss that its not worth it (unless I'm being paid the big bucks).

Then again I'm British, and an American I've recently befriended has shown me how different attitudes to the employer employee relationship can be

Idk.. sounds very weird to me because when I was a kid in the Northeast I had one (1) winter jacket. If it was between September and March I left the house with the jacket else I didn't. Simple. I can't imagine my parents ever checking the weather and I can't imagine a child owning several jackets. Very odd. People make things much too complicated.

This winter so far the temp ranged from 2f to 60f... In 48 hours... So in those cases you know if it is single jacket, double jacket, or sweatshirt.

That's one example. Schedules, playing music, guitar tuner, uke tuner, metric conversion when hands are dirty from cooking, and plenty of other examples are abundant in our house

Yes, I am extremely familiar with that temperature fluctuation. I still owned 1 winter jacket and if I got hot I unzipped it or took it off. We didn't have money for multiple fancy jackets or sweaters or whatever. You'd outgrow your multiple jackets before you even got to wear them.

> People make things much too complicated.

Pretty much the story of modern civilization. Just step outside and check the temperature, and look up at the clouds and guess if it's gonna rain later. Wear a sweat shirt or waterproof windbreaker if in doubt. Or you can just not care about getting mildly cold or wet. I say this as someone who spent 25 years in Minnesota.

And then you have a kid who you have to pick up from school, you are going to be at work until you pick them up. It might look fine in the morning but might rain in the afternoon.

But sure, you don't need umbrella either and we could all be driving open cars :)

Meh, if my kid is anything like me, they won't care about getting wet. If they do care then they can buy a Google Home with their allowance and check the weather to their heart's content. Plus, no plans to send my future children to school or to be working a 9-5 job.

My kids don't care about getting wet either. I do.

Don't get one if you don't want to, the discussion is whether it's useful and it is. Not just for the weather not just for rain. For many little things in life.

Honestly there has been a few times in my entire life I've checked the weather report for guidance on how to dress. Every single time I've been burned and ended up dressing inappropriately. I do much better using my own senses. However, I don't really use an umbrella because I never had one growing up so I guess if you wanted to make sure you weren't caught in the rain without one you'd have to check the weather report.

So it doesn't rain in the summer? It doesn't rain in the fall? It doesn't rain in the spring?

Nothing complicated about it, it's just a reality for many people.

Well, in my case, I didn't own an umbrella as a kid and neither did any other kid I knew, so I guess it didn't matter.

And 200 years ago we didn't have umbrellas. Sure, none of it matters. You don't need a television either. You don't need running shoes to run.

Not sure what you think you are proving here.

I'm simply answering a question you, yourself, asked. Sorry for having the "wrong" answer.

I didn't really think of rain in my original comment because when I was growing up we literally just walked in the rain.

you didn't use computers either, or cellphones, or visited this forum.

Again whats your point?

+this. You just described every morning at my house (including asking Google home what the weather is), and we only have one kid. It's also very useful that everyone in the room gets to hear the answer. Same for setting timers. "you have five minutes left of play time. " It makes the process very transparent. We have a 20 minute walk to school, rain, snow, or shine, and getting the munchkin dressed appropriately (and willingly) is key.

Both Alexa and Google home have been great with a kid.

People used to have passive displays of the outdoor weather, that could be checked handsfree.[0] No voice-recognition spy machine necessary.

[0] http://www.leevalley.com/en/images/item/Gardening/ab804s1.jp...

Or you can buy a bit more advanced but disconnected from IoT botnet:

https://www.amazon.com/AcuRite-02027A1-Forecast-Temperature-...

Personally, I devote the upper 1/8th of my phone's homescreen to a widget that shows a weather graph (temp, rain/snow, wind) for the next 36 hours. The forecast updates every 2 hours.

But then again, we live a few hours north of the location where they filmed the Battle of Hoth. Asking anyone, let alone a machine, "what is the weather outside" gives you little information about the weather in six hours.

Must be interesting to live that far north. FWIW further south people configure their phones likewise because the question of whether there will be rain is when rather than if - or at least during the rainier season(s).

Yes good point, my granddad had barometer etc.

There is something about the tangibility of information we use a lot. Instead of it being hidden behind login, app launch etc we just access it directly.

For some tasks, yes. But even in the case of human conversation, the spoken word is often a poor medium of information exchange.

Telling Alexa "send me some paper towels" only works if you have established a protocol in writing with Amazon (i.e. I want a 8 pack of jumbo bounty).

Your use case "how is the weather" is useful, but is it useful enough to be "the next big thing"? It may be big, but not smartphone big.

It's funny - we've been remodeling our house, and as part of it, added a bunch of z-wave compatible switches. I was moving some stuff back in (we've been out of it), walked into the house at night, and after living with an Echo and a Google Home for the last year and a half, had a very strong urge to say "Hey, Google, turn on all the lights." -- unfortunately, I hadn't moved the Home in yet! :) I was carrying a large box and it would have been fantastic.

My experience with both devices is that there's no one Big Thing, except maybe music. There's a lot of stuff that just works surprisingly well by voice. Quoting my daughter: "Hey, Google, play Puff the Magic Dragon" - "What's the weather today?" - "Turn on/off the lights" - "Set a timer for 5 minutes" - "What's 17 tablespoons in cups?" - "How long does it take light to get to Mars?"

It's probably not smartphone big. But I think that in the long term, we're going to find that some kind of voice-based interactive device like this will become very common.

That was not my only use case though.

I cook a lot, timing is important.

I have fun playing games with my kids teaching them trivia, Google Home does that while we are free to do other things.

We listen to a lot of different music. Google at home allow me to stream from Spotify simply by saying the type i want.

My wife likes to listen to radio, she just tell Google at home to start a radio station.

Listening to the news, google does a pretty good job assembling what is most important during the day.

You can ask it to play the latest "Startups for the rest of us" podcast simply by asking it to play that.

You can ask it when you next flight is.

How long it's going to take to get to somewhere.

You can add things to a shopping list which is important when you are family.

And these are just things that it does out of the box. I don't care about switching on lights which it also can do and turn the heat up or down.

What I think most of you realize is that just like the touchscreen removed a layer of abstraction to access technology because it allow for things humans do naturally. So does the voice. It's extremely intuitive as there is nothing to learn. As voice gets better and better it's going to change a lot of things.

The sales numbers of Alexa is pretty telling too and this is from all sorts of people like my parents in law who now have one they use and understand.

I don't care whether it's going to be the next big thing, but to claim as the parent did that voice is a bad interface is simply as wrong as it can be and to claim there is no value in what it can besides a few things, well it turns out at least for my family those few things are pretty useful.

Voice input is what we humans use when we speak to each other.

Except that humans have an average IQ of 100. They understand context, they get what I'm trying to say. Try getting Siri to turn off all repeating alarms, just for today. Or turn off all alarms until 12pm.

"But that's not how Siri is supposed to work!"

Sure, fine. It's just a ux to a limited api. But then you can't also compare it to how we use the same input for humans. Robots aren't humans. Not by a long shot. They have an api, a very specific and limited set of capabilities. They are not flexible. They don't get context.

Voice interfaces have their place. Because once you know the api, the possibilities, voice may well be most practical. But not because we happen to talk to humans.

Siri and Google Voice are in completely different leagues. I find Siri completely useless; I use Google's voice interface all the time; it even understands context.

The product you're talking about I think is "Google Now". Google Voice is Google's VoIP-ish service, precursor to Google Fi

and completely abandoned.

Abandoned but atleast it still works. Can make a new phone number and I can still call US numbers abroad for free.

but sending an sms via the app fails 80% of the time

Heh :)

Thats like complaining about a commodore 64 not being able to run the same games as a Playstation.

The discussion is not whether Alexa, Siri and Google Home are perfect AI's but whether they are good enough for some very basic things like those I described.

And no it's not because we talk to humans that they are good, it's because we interact with other humans through speech.

If you really understand context, a lot of the time you don't need voice at all.

Consider a voice operated light switch. Why do I need to tell the switch I want the lights to turn on when I enter I room? The house AI should know the ambient light level, the time of day, my location in the house, and my default lighting preferences, and lighting should "just work" unless I want to change something - which is when I can ask for it.

Alexa can't do any of this yet. I can give Alexa commands to turn lights on or off, but currently there isn't even a context for the current light state. So I can't say "Alexa, lights" and have Alexa work out whether that means "turn the lights on" or "turn the lights off" for the room I'm in.

IFFT may eventually be able to do this, but it's far from transparent and straightforward.

It's about affordances. I have a reasonable idea what a human's affordances are. The current voice UI (vUI?) equivalent is a handful of dots of implemented functionality surrounded by huge areas of not-working-yet space.

Not only is there no map, there's no way to guess what might be on the map.

It's also about cognitive load. I'm typing this in a bedroom with a couple of 433MHz switches controlled by a remote - one for a light, one for a heater.

Using the remote takes no conscious load at all. When I had the switches controlled by Alexa, formulating a command took effort.

All what you are saying is true but it's missing the point I was trying to make originally which was that what it can do now is more than enough to be very useful for many of us.

I don't think you are appreciating the things that used to be which got lost with digitalization and now can get back.

It's not just about what the AI can do, it's how it gets expressed.

I disagree. My habits would be so hard for a computer to learn, mostly because they already frustrate humans who are much smarter. When the sun goes down, I don't want all the lights to turn on. I don't even necessarily want all the lights on in the room I'm sitting in. Many times I sit in a lit-up room just because I can't turn the sun off. Once it goes down, it's nice to sit in the dark watching TV.

That is unless I'm reading a book, in which case I need a light on. But not just any light, I'd probably just lamp next to me to shine on my book instead of the one that lights the whole room. I don't need the whole room lit, just my book. So now the contextual system needs to have cameras to see if I'm reading or just watching TV or playing on my phone or napping.

And when I walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night, I'm fine with the nightlight above the toilet. Turning on all the lights will wake me up and ruin my night vision. But my wife likes the light on. So now we need facial recognition to tell who is walking into the room.

Right now I have to get up and turn on a light if I'm on the couch reading. If we're talking effort, that's a hell of a lot more effort than saying "Alexa, turn on my reading lamp". And don't get me started on the effort it takes to try to find the missing remote...

I'm with you on this most of the way.

However, the voice ux projects at big tech companies are inevitably about collecting training data.

Five years down the road that limited API is going to be a lot less limited.

My phone is always with me, either on a countertop or in my pocket.

"Ok Google, is it going to rain today?" is something I can (and do) ask at any point. No need to have a new device in every room of my house and no need to learn a different interface when driving in my car etc.

So you are agreeing with what I say :) Voice is easier than opening your phone and finding the app to launch it.

That's because our Inteligent Designer only gave us low fidelity analog I/O ports. We can do way better with keyboards and digital signals nowadays.

Voice is great to have conversations. To give short commands, other interfaces are good as well.

For example, I can check the weather for today on my phone with minimal fuzz, clicking 2 or 3 times and getting much richer information (a full graph with short term forecast, a few hours in advance, etc) in a single screen shot. Another example, ordering a pizza. I prefer a GUI over calling and taking to some human. The options are clearer, and I can review easily what I'm ordering.

Not to say that it's impractical, but voice doesnt carry a lot of info for a lot of services. We'd prefer a phone call over an specific tactile interface for everything, and that's not the case...

I a not sure I understand what you are getting at.

I gave some pretty specific examples of what it's great for.

I am not saying it's great enough yet for much more complex things no disagreement there. But unlike Seamless web or mobile interface I could potentially just with the command, "order the usual from Joe's Pizza" skip a whole suite of interactions needed to order food today.

> My wife was very sceptic about this and is certainly no tech fanatic, she now loves it because as she said she can now turn listen to radio just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio.

Oh god please. I can't understand how complicated radio is these days. Fuck me, I'm forever returning or rescanning or some bullshit just to listen to something.

Is there something weird about radio in the US? Radio is still the same old AM and FM stations here, you just "turn on the radio" to listen to it like you always have. Am I missing something?

Lol your entire family is being data-mined, and your kids will grow up to feel like this is normal, good job.

Hope it was worth the convenience.

You are being datamined just being on this website. True but trivial.

Well of course. But that is certainly different than having a Google-powered microphone that is always listening.

Well a microphone cant hear what website you are visiting. So not sure what your point is.

I'm not sure what your point is?

As if knowledge of me visiting a public site is comparable to Google having an always-on microphone that probably is riddled with 0days and has constant internet activity that can easily mask a malicious connection?

it only takes approximately 10 minutes of recorded audio to interpret individual keystrokes with a ~96% accuracy. [1]

Google / NSA / foreign state hackers / your next door neighbor could potentially find or pay for an exploit to the device and have all of your passwords down within a few days. All of your children's passwords.

It can reconstruct every message you've typed in range of the microphone. Ergo unless you rely on bookmarks and not the address bar, it can in fact track which websites you visit. Furthermore, it could interact with ultrasonic sounds emitted by your computer speakers to track your ad experience, and if you live in a malevolent state, to locate you. [2]

If your kids are a problem to the police state, they will be identified and marked before they even know they want to be political activists.

This is the world you aren't only allowing, but are defending as well.

[1] http://rakesh.agrawal-family.com/papers/ssp04kba.pdf, https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acou...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-tha...

You would be surprised what you visiting public sites can be used for. Insurance purposes for instance. You should be much more worried about that.

And then there are the ISPs you use to access the internet. Or the cellphone tracking your wereabouts or your camera and your microphone on your laptop. Or your router.

I could go on. If that's what you are afraid of that game is already lost.

Why do you insist on thinking I'm also not concerned about those forms of unlawful surveillance?

You're trying to invalidate my legitimate concern over a device's security implications by telling me other devices have security implications as well. No shit.

> just like in the old days when all you had to do was turn on the radio

Weather and traffic reports are still a staple of radio broadcasts

Building a huge complex and expensive system to save you 3 second to check the weather is not what I would call revolutionary.

Then it's a good thing that thats not the only thing it does and that it's never been the claim from anyone.

Right now it's pretty much what it does. Small little things that takes 2 seconds without it. And it's less reliable. I've yet to witness a revolutionary use of IoT.

I use it for a hell of a lot more than just the weather. Google Home is reliable. Siri isn't.

There are certain times when a voice interface is dramatically faster, simpler and more intuitive than a visual UI. One example is setting a timer or alarm. Another is asking for conversions (how many teaspoons in a tablespoon).

The Amazon Dot is my favorite kitchen tool, we use it more than we do spoons at this point. The ability to set multiple timers, convert units and measures, and remind you to do things all while playing your favorite tunes is amazing.

Billion dollar kitchen timers

You laugh but it is a seriously good thing. I mentioned the 'side project' I had submitted that Google legal had rejected, it was combining Siri with timers and cooking facts as the ultimate kitchen timer. As the GP points out, there are a bazillion factoids you might consult while cooking and a huge win for cooking is having everything come out at the same time (co-ordinating timers) so as an app on your phone following you around in your pocket it can be pretty killer.

"I see you're baking chicken, Dave. 98% of recipes agree your requested baking time and temperature will result in an overly dry bird. I'm afraid I can't allow you to set your own smart oven parameters anymore..."

Given how badly people screw chicken up on a regular basis, I'm not even seeing the problem here, and I'm usually the one to shout Skynet during an otherwise reasonable discussion on AI.

Fucking up food is a sin.

Dave needs to get a food thermometer.

I could see Alexa married to a Kindle with a kickstand being a killer kitchen tool.

No. A billion dollar system that is so accessible that it's not even insane to connect a simple kitchen timer to it.

Sci-fi got it wrong with their humorous stupid robots providing comic relief while smart robots do the work. All the robots are the same smart, and getting better every day.

I like Alexa in the kitchen for shopping lists and some other tasks such as, as you say, converting measurements.

I don't actually care that much for it as a time though. The other timers I can easily set in the kitchen tell me at a glance how much time is left. Alexa I have to ask. These are small things but it means I don't default to using Alexa.

If you only have one timer going and you're watching the clock then it is a bit of a pain.

However when you're preparing a meal or making cookies and you're constantly moving and not watching the clock, just responding to it, it becomes handy. It's also nice to not have to stop and wash your hands to set an egg timer.

I was going to suggest the initial use cases for voice control are summed up as "when your hands are busy not on a keyboard."

HN isn't the best sample group for this, because for most people that's a pretty large amount of the time.

I use the timer feature all the time for kids time outs. I've got four kids, and often need multiple timers. It's perfect because I can set it from the other room while resolving whatever issue sent them away. I do wish it had an "Add 5 minutes" feature though, for every time they come out early.

I tried using Google Now for timers for a while, the amount of times it didn't start properly or you'd say:

"Google Now, Set a timer for..[slight pause]...<How long would>three<you like>minutes<a timer for?> [Pause, pause, pause] Three minutes. Three minutes! Three Fuck<Setting timer for>ing Minutes<three minutes>.

I am now manually inputting timers again.

Yeah, well, don't assume Siri will help you with that. <Long press Home> "What's the..."

"I'm sorry, mikestew, I didn't catch that."

Maybe if you waited more than 2.6 milliseconds for me start flapping my pie hole, you'd have something to catch.

I presume on your phone? I set echo timers/alarms nearly every day and don't think I have ever had to repeat myself. The far-field mics make a huge difference in recognition accuracy when you aren't talking directly into the device.

Same here. Dot in the kitchen connected to 10" subwoofer+satellites. Spotify/Amazon Music (kids' favourite), setting timers, listening to news in the morning. That's about it. Jokes and calculator sometimes.

I'd like it if the knowledge graph was better, for answering questions. Just wikipedia queries is a bit lame. I think Google Home will win on that one.

Oh, and I'd really, really like to be able to voice call/skype through it (presuming the array mic + software will be able to isolate my voice/remove reverberation well enough).

IM (with TTS) could be fun too

Home automation tasks also tend to lend themselves much better to voice interfaces than touch because voice commands are always available regardless of where you are or what devices you have (or don't have) with you.

I was a huge skeptic of voice assistants before the Echo came along, but being able to turn my lights on and off with a single voice command alone has been more than worth the price of entry for the Echo Dot + TP-Link Smart Switch combo I got for $60.

The same criticism can be levied against keyboard-driven tools aimed at power users. That doesn't make the tool less useful, it just shifts its target audience.

Exactly. The use cases and target audience are different. I use my echo dot for playing songs, switch off lights and add random alarm/timer etc. The future not might be voice only, but it will definitely voice intensive.

"Big" only works if someone can make big money. It can't have advertising without becoming useless. So, Voice activated lights are "The Clapper 2.0" which was not a big deal last time around.

Sure, there is a niche for reordering products easily, but commodity voice tech is going to rapidly hit zero margins. Like those 10$ TV dongles that used to take a full PC.

The clapper was a huge product. Millions of units shipped, mostly for $30 1980s dollars at a high margin.

"Millions" is not such a big deal. 10 Million of units shipped * 30$ ~= 300 million retail.

Google makes 330 million in profit every week.

Sure... but how much does Google Home make?

Why does every business have to reach Google profit levels, though? A business that turns a healthy profit with low margins is a successful business.

Sure, but it does contradict any assertion calling it the "next big platform".

I have this exact criticism with modern GUIs. Hide the scroll bars. Move all the icons into a hamburger menu. Strip chrome from everything.

It's maddening. There's absolutely no way to discover how to use apps like this unless you already know how.

The side swiping menus (like in Snapchat) are so confusing to me as an old guy. How the heck are we expected to know you can swipe left and right on a screen to reveal a completely new screen?!?

There's no good way, and I really dislike this modern trend of un-discoverable UIs.

It's discovery/referral gating. Teens who get Snapchat upon hearing it from a friend can ask their friends on how to use it, and it stimulates conversation and feature discovery. If you don't have at least one existing friend who is experienced at using Snapchat, you're probably not in their target market (by design).

You see this social gatekeeping in how they distributed their spectacles, too.

Because you try it once or twice when exploring a new touch interface?

It takes all of < 1 second. I get it is obfuscated but we aren't talking about a crazy level of interface hiding.

People expect to be able to swipe on most interfaces these days.

It does take < 1 second. And then so does swiping right. And left. And up. And pressing. And long-pressing. And double-tapping. And two-finger tapping. And two-finger swiping (in all directions). For every element on the screen. For all screens.

See you in a few hours.

>https://www.google.com/#q=snapchat+swipe+left

Just consult the nearest "X things you need to know/didn't know about Snapchat" article /s

Slack's iOS app has like two side-swiping menus essentially stacked on top of each other. One of those menus (the first one) is NEVER what I want. The whole thing is so confusing, and I have to relearn it every time I actually need it.

I can't stand how almost every mobile app use icons without labels, so I have to press them to find out what they do. If I'm lucky there's a tooltip available if I long press.

I've seen these complaints, slightly re-worded a number of places, and I remain confused. The changes aren't that big.

"File, Edit, View" etc model is condensed into 3 horizontal lines. The lines I suspect were modeled on the idea of a row, with one option per row after another. Click "View" in a random app, oh look, one after another. Don't like that notion? Think of it as a Start menu in ever app, and you still have to drill down. It's barely a change, since the idea has existed since Windows 95!

Small screens need less chrome to highlight content. It's about the user having the best view of their content, not peddling a catalog of "me to" features and pretty icons in people's faces. Turns out, people actually enjoy seeing more of their content on desktops too, rather than rows of default icons.

Scrollbars? People still stop what they're doing to look for the scrollbar? I stopped dealing with that once MS shipped the Intellimouse 20 years ago. Tap/drag on mobile. You know how to tell if you're at the bottom of a document? It won't scroll further.

"It's maddening. There's absolutely no way to discover how to use apps like this unless you already know how."

But you KNOW how to use them already. They're just slightly modified. And these things have existed long enough now, there's no excuse not to just swipe either side or tap the hamburger to see what's up? I mean, how am I going to know what the new app using classic "File, Edit, View" menus does? By using the input options I have, mouse, keyboard, to dig through them. That hasn't changed on these new desktop apps. On mobile, input options are fingers, tap and swipe about.

This falls into a category of "Personally, I don't want to rethink things ever." type arguments.

This is the Infocom problem: You're trying to present the user with two fundamental illusions. 1) the computer can understand what you're saying, totally and completely, and 2) that you (or it) can do anything.

However, it can't, it can't, and you can't. And when the illusion fails, it's frustrating: Neil Stephenson would call it Metaphor Shear, I (being less fancy) would call it why-didn't-they-give-me-a-better-ui-or-at-least-a-manual-dang-it.

This is ultimately why I prefer unambiguous interfaces over "friendly" ones.

I only have two problems with voice, one of which is UX related:

1. It's slow. Apple AirPods are a good example. Siri controls the volume. Talking is slow. The input and response until the volume is changed is slow. Faster would be to use the long side of the AirPod as a touch control and sliding up and down it changes the volume. One finger slide = volume change. Two finger slide = track change. In any case, touch controls are way faster than voice.

2. It's weird in public, and faulty in loud environments. Talking aloud to yourself is going to get strange looks at you. I tend to do things that don't bring me attention, so I don't use Siri. Also, good luck using Siri at a concert or loud train commute.

> because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do

This is how I thought about search without search operators. Then Google got it right and owned the market.

So I agree with you -- but I also think someone will eventually get it right, and that company will take off.

It's like a CLI- intimidating and not discoverable at first, but hopefully powerful later on. Except I am not sold on how it will be powerful yet: it lacks th "replay" that cli's have with scripts, and it lacks composability right now.

Tab completion, the "history" command, and using the up-arrow weren't in the first shells either. Eventually someone will find a way to create custom macros with voice commands.

I have no idea what that would look like for the end consumer but I remain hopeful!

> It can work 99% of the time, but if that 1% it breaks down and I have to revert to a device with a screen, it kind of ruins the point.

I don't think your statistics makes any sense.

99% of the time, you save time by speaking your intent, vs interfacing with your phone. That time saved is meaningful and outweighs the 1% of the time you have to fall back to your screen device.

99% of the time, you can use your hands/fingers for other tasks while speaking your intent. That allows you to multitask more efficiently.

Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do

Very true -- our Echo can control the lights, but I can never remember what each light is called, while with a GUI, I can see the list and it's obvious that "Livingroom - TV" is the light near the TV that I want to dim, while "Livingroom - TV table" is the one on the table to the right of the TV and I want to turn that one off.

In addition, Voice works well if you are alone in a silent enviroment. It does not work well if kids are playing loudly in the same room and the wife is yelling at you from the next room.

I also don't like the feeling of having a dedicated microphone set up that records everything, waiting for a command and is completly intransparent about what it sends back to Amazon/Google/Apple.

It's great for certain interactions. I use it to turn off the lights and set alarms before I go to bed, get the weather every morning, make grocery lists, etc. Nothing huge, but the reduced friction is great.

Also, for the $100 price it frequently goes on sale at, it's a great wireless speaker with Spotify integration built in.

Google Home is an exception to that I think. Partly because you have a good idea which Google searches result in a knowledge graph result. Those are read out by Google Home.

Also you're being very "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

I want voice-activated lights... That's about it.

The problem is: The electronic light control modules are expensive, break down after 1-2 years, and then go obsolete.

I'll spend more time rewiring my house than stumbling around in the dark!

> I want voice-activated lights... That's about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clapper

The led wifi light bulbs seem like a good option when you have actual lamps. When they become obsolete in a few years you buy another one?

Maybe this could work like Tesla is trying to get auto driving working:

When you say 'Hey Google / Siri / Alexa / whatever' a connection is set up to a real human who can control your house automation. Then the system could be self learning because the operator is translating your command into an action.

But it would not be for me. I absolutely never felt the need for home automation (don't think it is going to make my life better). And I care for my privacy.

The point about talking out loud is the key one for me. It doesn't matter how good the interface is, I don't want to talk out loud to myself in public. The same way I don't use magic wand like gestures to control phone.

Talking, while potentially more natural, is also simply slower than most other input types.

>Voice input is a terrible UX, because as a user, you have no idea what the system can and can't do.

This is the same as the command line. Just like the command line, voice may not be completely intuitive initially but for regular use, it's probably much faster than a colorful GUI.

much powerful maybe, but not much faster.

Even using Siri, which everyone can agree is terrible, having her set a timer using voice is much, much faster than picking up your phone, unlocking it, navigating to the Clock app, switching to the right tab of the app, then setting a timer.

"Hey Siri, set a timer for fifteen minutes". Done.

That's a bit disingenuous. iOS command center swipe up, timer button and it'll remember your last setting. Works faster than voice for the most common use case.

>That's a bit disingenuous

People love to misuse that word.

I just tried it with best case scenarios, and it's still a second or so faster using voice (1.5 seconds) vs control center (3 seconds). I mean, voice is literally just yell out "hey siri set a timer for 15 minutes" and that ends the interaction. Done, just like that.

If you're changing the time that is set, it's significantly longer.

You aren't including the time it takes to find your phone, pull it out, maybe unlock it, and THEN do the steps you describe.

That's friction, and that's where these frictionless interfaces step in.

I didn't see Google Now in the list of "every single voice UX you've tried", so recommend trying that. It's pretty great actually, and only getting better. I've tried most of these systems, and Siri is actually a joke in comparison.

Thx. I thought i was the only one WHO HATE Voice input. Especially when i have a long day i dont want to speak to a bloody machine just to get things done.

I think Voice Input should be an Additional, not as the ONLY input method.

Voice is a command line style UX and is a tool that is useful in those cases. You have to memorize commands although.

"you have no idea what the system can and can't do" - shouldn't matter.

I agree that the UX is pretty bad now. But Potentially, a system could monitor your on screen behavior and educate you unobtrusively when you do something that might have been easier by voice. Theoretically, the device could monitor your location and background noise to understand if voice commands are reasonable at that time.

I want to see voice assistants become actually useful and usable in the coming years, and agree that massive data-vacuuming like "monitoring background noise" is probably the fastest way to pump enough data through ML and AI techniques to push them forward, but that feels unnervingly intrusive.

I avoid these devices for the privacy concerns and also the generally poor security of IoT devices. I hate to sound like a luddite, but i really abhor these devices and how hard the tech companies are trying to foist them upon us as "the next big thing".

I am not proposing sucking in all the data, I mean an awareness of its environment so it knows when voice is appropriate. For instance if it can detect me driving in my car (due to speed) with no passengers (noise it has heard) maybe it can understand it should use voice.

You do realize that in order for the assistant to know you're in a car, and that you're "at speed" it would likely need access to your location information, right? Aggregated over time (even if only when the assistant is "on" - ie, the iOS "while using" setting), that's a pattern of your movements.

Either Apple/Google/etc and granulize the permissions such that things like "boolean: user is in vehicle at speed" are addressable separately (possible but unlikely) or such knowledge comes with a cost - the app knows where you are and have been.

Same applies doubly for "noise it has heard".

Consequently my decision is: no assistant, thankyouverymuch.

Ok, so how exactly would assistants do that? They'd need to take environmental inputs such as GPS data to determine if you were travelling in a car. It would need to have consistent access to your microphone and speakers so that it could gather and compute info relating to your environment (noise levels, voice recognition, etc). Combine that with the fact that most phones already track your location fairly precisely. There exists almost zero incentive for Google/Fb/Apple/Amazon/MSFT to NOT collect and aggregate massive amounts of user data.

How will it learn to compare all these different environments? ML obviously; which pretty much entails leveraging the consumer data to provide a better product. The cost of usable, voice-driven assistants is giving up a vast trove of personal data and abandoning the concept of privacy completely, just so I can order some paper towels from an Internet of Shit connected device instead of walking three blocks to a store.

Your position is akin to a Louis CK joke(not offense meant): "Oh boy! I hope he doesn't do what he's going to do!"

I start from the firm belief that "technology X will never be worse than it is now."

Whether you're considering voice interfaces, connection speeds, machine learning, web development, phone battery life, or whatever.. things are trending towards the better. Sometimes it's steady improvement, other times it's punctuated. Either way, the floor on what we can considering is always increasing.

This is rather debatable when it comes to human-machine interfaces. UI goes through phases of improvement followed by radical degredation due misguided, cargo-culted redesigns. Take cars as an example. In my car I can adjust the airflow and temperature with a button and a knob, but in newer models a touchscreen or voice command is required that takes quite a bit longer.

I start from the firm belief that "technology X will never be worse than it is now."

While not quite what you meant, Firefox is frequently bloody awful now and it used to be quite usable :)

Mozilla as an org is off the tracks and has been for a long time.

Counter-examples: Privacy (almost always getting worse), security (no clear trend, but it would be hard to argue it's consistently getting better), usability / discoverable interfaces (debatable)

Privacy, I'll agree with.

I think security is getting better but what we see now are the consequences of years of poor decisions. It's the post-Christmas credit card bill.

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