Very few owners of Alexa-powered devices use them for shopping | Hacker News Reader

Very few owners of Alexa-powered devices use them for shopping

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Why make a habit of buying things in this method when you're always unsure of the price, and you're often unsure of the authenticity?

The only use case that makes sense is I can see it being used for is reorders of brand-name consumables you've already vetted. But even when you trust you're getting a product actually made by Tide (or whomever), its unclear you're getting the exact match as a previous purchase - the brand may have decided to repackage it into something 6 ounces less than before. This happens a lot. Prices also tend to fluctuate quite a bit, enough that occasionally you'll get a price way outside normal range and would benefit from looking at other brands.

Lots of room for error, and voice as a channel is too narrow to deliver an efficient experience that corrects for these issues. These are fixable by Amazon, but judging by what little policing there is on the authenticity of items, I doubt it'll happen anytime soon.

Not just that, but every respectably large brand other than Apple will have fragmented their product into a zillion overlapping SKUs that will mean that ordering the correct product will require a list of qualifiers comparable to an elaborate Starbucks order.

Alexa, I want the tide high-efficiency unscented cold-water large box of detergent please.

I was skeptical about buying through Alexa until I finally tried it. I found out that I value convenience more than detailed selection, at least for reorders and staple products (kitchen and bathroom soaps, etc).

Or you could just buy 3 soaps every once a year and you wouldn’t need to speak to Alexa at all.

Quiet you. If we don't constantly overengineer solutions to simple problems a lot of our industry will be out of a job.

You have subscribe and save and amazon dash buttons as non-voice alternatives.

I've never had the slightest problem with my dash button WRT counterfeit and SKU foolishness... push button next to empty kitchen trash bag box, receive kitchen trash bags tomorrow, it really is that simple.

Frankly, I'm disgusted.

I couldn't be part of the electronic, energy, packaging and transport waste that this approach contributes to.

If I run out of trash bags, I buy more next time I'm at the supermarket. If I'm likely to forget to do that, I'll leave the empty box somewhere visible until I do remember, or if it's urgent write a note on a scrap of paper.

"Alexa, next time I'm at the supermarket, remind me I need trash bags" would be far more reasonable.

"Cortana, next time I'm at Kroger, remind me to get trash bags" is something I use all the time still. It really is the best approach, and something I don't think Cortana gets enough credit for, as one of the key "personal assistant" workflows that they made sure they got right.

Notification spam on my phone makes that unusable. In between google asking my review of a gas station and some mobile phone game bugging me for not playing enough and a notification about an email that I handled on a desktop six hours ago and a missed call from a suspected spam number there might or might not be an important shopping list notification but I'll never see it buried in the reflexive clearing of spam notifications. And I have it relatively easy...

One of the first things to do is to switch off and actively refuse all notifications unless you find one that is really very, very useful to you. It makes no sense to leave the defaults.

There are entire apps that I've found alternatives for simply because I didn't like their notifications. I'm also very quick to deprioritize and/or block notifications for apps that don't need notifications. Notification management is a real concern.

I still think that the Windows Live Tile approach to notifications that don't need immediate attention is still one of the best, and wish Android and iOS would both offer something much more similar to that as a good option to help clean up the notification world.

The composition of waste is probably different between online and brick-and-mortar stores, but the total waste is probably similar given that the total costs are similar.

What happen's when your kid presses the button 20 times?

They won't send you 20. And stop putting little buttons where your kids can press them. Of course they want to.

They won't send you another one until the first one has arrived. Also you get notifications and the option to cancel each one when the order is made.

For all those times I'm in my house without my phone or laptop to order something?

Is it possible to turn off third-party sellers?

I'd be afraid of getting a counterfeit, and possibly dangerous or poisonous, product blindly ordering from Amazon third-party sellers.

Avoiding third-party sellers doesn’t mean you’ll avoid counterfeits, alas. Amazon mixes stock, so even if you buy directly from Amazon, you could just as easily end up with an item from a third-party seller claiming to sell the same thing.

Is it smart enough to know that "buy more soap" means to get the same soap you bought before?

Yes, this effect has prevented me from even being able to use the product subscription services Amazon has tried to launch. I might get one or two periodic shipments but then I'd hear "Oops, that product is discontinued." Turns out it's still around, just in slightly different packaging, or with a new brand tweak. In the end the uncertainty and reliability and hassle are all far worse than just remembering to buy myself more shave gel and toothpaste at the store when I start to run low.

But given how hard it is to even find just standardized products on Amazon at a reasonable price and with Prime shipping from a reliable seller, etc, etc, when I can _see_ what's going on, I personally would never trust Alexa to do the selection for me.

In another situation, I had a subscription for one product that was $32 when I started subscribing and I just cancelled it after noticing that the price has risen to over $50

I agree that voice is very narrow, but it's also quite expressible when there's a person to call someone and ask then grab something from the store for you. But even that, at the best experience we know, with actual humans on both sides, is so fraut with error, that it's hard to imagine a computer so self organized and intelligent with perfect clarity listening, then be able navigate sets of known preferences and purchasing hueristic understanding, that it just doesn't seem worth the time to invest. I guess I can imagine it, but error rate would have to be an order of magnitude lower than just calling someone ourselves, I don't see it likely for more than minor purchases.

> I agree that voice is very narrow, but it's also quite expressible when there's a person to call someone and ask then grab something from the store for you.

Don't get me started...

For some reason, most normal people can't express their preferences - and they absolutely have them, which they'll be very happy to shout at you about when you come back with the wrong product. I've learned the hard way that when someone asks me to buy e.g. milk, I need to ask about brand, size, fat percentage, UHT or no, and which other brands/sizes/percentages are acceptable if the preferred one is not available - and I need to ask those questions before leaving.

Or maybe it's just me who wasn't born with mind-reading capability...

(And no, buying the "usual one" is not a good strategy, because there are good chances that they need a different one just this once, and yes, I was supposed to guess that myself.)

My wife has been made aware that she must write exactly what she wants on the shopping list (I do the shopping); I get what is on the list. If what she wrote is incorrect, so too will be what I buy. If there's ambiguity, I call her. I find food shopping to be very high stress (because half the things I buy involve me asking myself if it's the right thing, what I might be reading incorrectly, etc). If the shopping list is particularly odd (she's trying a new recipe and needs lots of unusual, specific ingredients), I make her do that trip.

The trick to this is, just be exceptionally bad at it. My wife doesn't ask me for things anymore after I did the shopping and came back with almost nothing on the list, but with things I thought were probably reasonable replacements.

"What do you mean, creme fraiche isn't double cream? It's close isn't it? It's dairy, right?"

People who think this way in about their relationships (and I used to be one of them) should try to apply the same thinking to an workplace situation in order to see how messed up it is. You're effectively the person at a workplace that is dodging all the unpleasant work and everyone else have to pick up the slack.

a) I don't apply this philosophy to my entire life.

b) It was mostly a joke - but I do happen to be exceptionally bad at this. I get frustrated about half an hour in and panic. I do other chores instead.

In this case, it's not dodging all unpleasant work, just the tasks for which normals are spectacularly bad at specifying what they want, while simultaneously being very sensitive to the correctness of the result. Personally, I always do my best to teach the other party how to communicate clearly, but I guess letting other people deal with that is a valid strategy too.

A better trick is to not put up with nonsense. Do the best you can and if the result isn’t to her liking, point out that it’s her responsibility to communicate all of their needs in that situation.

I don’t understand why so many men treat their wives like some sort of untamed beast, to be trained and placated and feared in equal measure. She’s a person, treat her like one.

What? In what way did you manage to infer that I treat her like some kind of untamed beast? What a completely ridiculous and unnecessary personal attack.

"The trick" to not do any household chores anymore?

Wives hate this one simple trick!

That's called "marriage", my friend ;)

Why make a habit of buying things in this method when...you're often unsure of the authenticity?

That sounds like the argument Internet bears made about online shopping during its early days.

I've never used Alexa, but can you not maybe express your preference beforehand and then just use that shortcut? Or even "buy the last detergent I bought"?

Yes, my echo is purely a voice activated Spotify speaker. Works great for this though, and worth the price.

FYI, we recently published a study of how people use their Alexa, based on interviews with 7 families and an analysis of log data from 75 participants. Here's a link to the paper (PDF):

http://www.cmuchimps.org/uploads/publication/paper/192/hey_a...

One thing that really surprised me when we did this work is that people actually own more than one Alexa device. One family we interviewed had 7 devices, though they used it primarily for controlling lights and asking the time.

The number one command from the logs was "Alexa stop". The number two was "Alexa". Number three was "stop".

Like the original posted article, we also saw very little use of shopping.

The funniest story we heard (which didn't make it into the paper) was how one family used Alexa as a timer for their children, for timeouts. A parent might say "Alexa, set timer for 5 minutes". One time, once the parent left, the kid said "Alexa, set time for 1 minute."

Interesting! Will you be continuing the research and comparing Alexa use to Siri/Google Home+Assistant? And do you personally think CUIs are good or bad for children to grow up talking with?

(I'm at CMU and I'm a GHome user if you need subjects!)

The only time I ordered something with Alexa is when Amazon offered a $10 credit to do so.

It's a terrible interface for one, but the biggest hurdle is that I really don't trust Amazon's pricing. Between add-on items, pantry, and third-party merchants, I always feel that I have to double check if I'm getting ripped off.

I think a lot of this would be alleviated by better integration with the mobile app so I could go "Alexa, order AA batteries" and it would add to an order in progress, so that I could then verify the items later on and complete.

You can do this, just tried it to verify. "Alexa add ______ to my shopping cart."

That's a bit of a mouthful. And it's generally a problem with all those voice assistants.

It's like an extra word...

It sounds like you just don't like voice assistants, which is fine but don't pretend that the words "shopping cart" are insurmountably larger than "buy".

It's not just an extra word. It's many extra syllables, when compared to: "Alexa, buy ___".

I don't like existing voice assistants, but for different reasons - mainly related to being online-only, and not giving ability to add commands at top-level. I want to say "Alexa, X" instead of "Alexa, ask SomeCommercialBrand to do X", ad nauseam.

> I want to say "Alexa, X" instead of "Alexa, ask SomeCommercialBrand to do X", ad nauseam.

Isn't that exactly what the Alexa skills are for? If you want a skill that's not available you can make your own, which is exactly what you want to be able to do.

The skills (usually) must follow a specific syntax involving the word "ask". So, for example, if you're using the Domino's skill to buy pizza, you say something like "Alexa, open [pizza brand] and place my Easy Order", or "Alexa, ask [pizza brand] to track my order." which are significantly more unwieldy (and more importantly, hard to remember) than "Alexa, order a pizza."

I frequently have to chain several, distinct "Alexa" commands together to achieve my desired end state. For example, if I want to turn on all the lights in my house, set their brightnesses to 100%, and set their colors to soft white, I have to send that as three distinct commands. Being able to create a shortcut, such as "Alexa, Lumos" or whatever would save roughly 30 seconds per instance.

Edit: I forgot to mention that some larger skills are exempt from this, once Amazon has added additional integrations. For example, for my thermostat, I can say "Alexa, set the AC to 78" rather than "Alexa, ask [brand] to set the temperature to 78". I still haven't discovered the special syntax to set the AC to Away mode yet.

> Being able to create a shortcut, such as "Alexa, Lumos"

You can do exactly this. I have several set up for my house. They're called 'routines' and can be triggered either with 'Alexa, [keyword]' or at a specific time of day.

You can also chain multiple commands together without saying the wakeword each time. For example 'Alexa, turn on downstairs lights. Downstairs lights white.' You have to enable this feature in the settings so that it will continue to listen briefly after the previous command.

> which are significantly more unwieldy (and more importantly, hard to remember)

And also, they're kind of brainwashing users as well. You find yourself repeating a commercial brand's name out loud, all the time. I'm sure third parties love it.

Exactly. With a real life (human) assistant, you don't need to be so explicit with delegation.

How many commands to Alexa at this point are at least 3+ words, though. I would think the majority. Alexa, set an alarm, reminder, timer for... Alexa play ___album/song by ___. Alexa, play ___ on TuneIn.

I'd have thought you could specify the verb to use and how to action the verb use, at least to some extent -- eg 'buy' means add items to my shopping list from the list of past-purchased items, flagging new items; 'checkout' means buy the current list.

I reorder paper towels all the time. It’s the fastest solution.

When I get around to it, I’ll find a few other things that work well.

I wonder tho... are you better off buying paper towels at Costco if you have one available?

Depends on what you mean by better off. I mean how much can you “save” on paper towels by going to Costco? $10-20 at most? Not even factoring in the cost of the membership and the hassle of going to the store.

$10-20 saved across dozens of product categories times 53 weeks in a year... Man, I grew up dirt poor, so my mind automatically calculates these angles, knowing that this is how I'll pay for my next vacation. However, I can see that not everyone thinks this way.

It does seem a little crazy/wasteful (fuel, packaging)/expensive to make an order for just paper towels, delivered.

If you're not using Amazon, it depends how close you live to the store. A supermarket delivery truck should drive fewer miles making 10 deliveries than those 10 people would driving to the store. Some supermarkets here will also deliver in reusable crates rather than bags. Most have offered same or next day delivery for years.

I don't know any supermarket that would let you order just paper towels though...

Having moved somewhere not near a delivery point or a lot of large stores, the convenience of same-day Amazon Prime is hard to beat.

It made sense when I was living in China, along with maybe TP and bottled water. Here on the states it seems like shipping/delivery would make it uneconomical.

Amazon doesn't charge for shipping - it's one of the key selling points for Prime, your free delivery being 2 days instead of 5-7.

They do, it’s just a subscription plan instead. And the underlying cost is still there, so if it becomes uneconomical then the subscription cost will go up or go away.

You may be able to find a situation where you get someone else to subsidize your cost, but it’s certain to be temporary.

But in China it was like a few hours from order to delivery. And even if it is technically free with prime, it really isn’t....it just doesn’t feel sustainable.

I think whatever basis you have for that intuition is off. You're saying it's more efficient and sustainable for everyone to drive to the store in their own personal gasoline-powered vehicle, taking time out of their own busy days, than to have a little bit of cardboard wrapped around the paper towels and dropped off by a shared delivery truck dedicated to the task and taking an optimal route?

Each point of drop off ya substantial costs, so you would get dinged fuel for the delivery of paper towels even if they had other deliveries in the truck. In China, it only works because there are no trucks, heck, it could just be a kid from the corner store with a hand truck.

When you go to the store and buy stuff, you are usually getting a lot of things together going point to point with other things that need getting done, or you are walking to the corner grocery store with a shopping cart if you are lucky enough to be urban. Personally, the fuel cost for having paper towels delivered is substantially more vs me going to get them by myself (since I’m walking to the store with a stroller/cart anyways).

How much is your time worth?

Since I have to go to the super market for fresh food, adding 30 seconds to get paper towels doesn't make much of a difference.

This, I guess, outlines a domino effect. I don't go to the supermarket for fresh food. It gets delivered to me by the supermarket, and if I can't be bothered to pick for myself, they'll deliver a selection based on my usual shopping pattern, and I know roughly what they'll deliver by default so e.g last week I didn't even open the app to check what they'd added to my order.

I couldn't imagine having to go to the shops every week.

I don't really get how this can work. Like I wanted to try those udon noodles that are next to the ones I normally buy this week. How do I tell that to Amazon? Or I didn't really like the kimchi last time so I wanted to try something new but instead of cabbage kimchi I bought radish kimchi because it was next on the shelf. But I wouldn't have known to search for that. Or the big avocados look better than the small ones. I'll get two of those instead of 3 of the large ones.

Do you still have this kind of product discovery with Amazon?

"Customers also bought..."

"You might also like..."

"Customers who did not buy this bought .... instead"

>I couldn't imagine having to go to the shops every week.

Why? Is it really so arduous to go out in public? To view a selection of products? To select your own produce? I am completely unable to comprehend how running errands is such an exhausting activity. Even when I was my most depressed, the times I would even turn down activities with friends, I still made it to the various stores I needed to live my life.

Costco is a wholesale market, not a supermarket. Not really a fresh food destination.

Went shopping there yesterday. Got salad mixes, tomatoes, potatoes, apples, carrots, cherries, broccoli, oranges, Brussels sprouts, etc.

Some stuff I buy elsewhere because the quantities are too large even for 2 adults and 3 teenagers.

We clearly have different definitions of "fresh food" if you are including pre-processed bag mixes and boxed vegetables sprayed with preservatives.

Nothing. When I'm not at work I don't get paid.

That's entirely missing the point. How much would you pay to have an extra 30 minutes with your kids or significant other? Or an extra 30 minutes on your hobby project? Or generally speaking doing anything other than buying paper towels at a wholesale market. That's how much your time is worth.

And our time is limited. Our kids are only living with us and wanting to play with us for scant few years. We're only young and healthy and able to do active things for scant few years too. The value of that time is more now than later.

If you're telling me that you would rather spend that 30min driving to Costco, dealing with parking, lugging that big pack of paper towels to the checkout stand, waiting in line, and driving back, all to save $2.50... that says a depressing amount about how much you value your life and the people you spend it with.

EDIT: Or you are actually so poor that the trade-off is "buy low price or don't don't eat next week," in which case I respect it. But then you wouldn't actually be shopping at Costco since it isn't the lowest prices.

Same here. Grew up poor, so I prefer to be aware of prices even though I have plenty now. Fun fact: 4 bottles of great beer at home = 1 glass of beer at a bar. And snacks are healthier too.

I grew up poor too. For the same reason I would always consider drinking at home a worse habit. So yes, that pint at the pub is much more pleasant than a 4 can at home.

Hmm. I think you're conflating issues. My parents didn't drink at all. But we were poor. Also buying 4 bottles/cans doesn't mean you drink them all at once. I'm with the parent comment... I can have FOUR evenings where I sit on the deck and sip a delicious beer (alone or with my wife and dog or a friend, etc) for the same price as a single pint of beer at a pub.

Of course, it's not a universal "or" - sometimes I want to sit a pub with people and try a single pint of beer I've never had before. The (great?!) grandparent point of comparing all these options is a reasonably healthy habit you can build, that often comes from experiencing poverty, and using the options available to you to avoid it in the future.

Yes, that’s what I meant. And “sometimes” I go to bars, too. Just not very often. It’s not even about poverty, it’s about not being stupid. For the same reason I have a coffee machine at home. Paid $800 (+$200 for 2 burr grinders) once, saved thousands by now, and my coffee is better.

that Costco pizza though... that in itself is the membership.

You don’t need a membership for the pizza, same with Sam’s club! Though I think both pizzas have declined in quality over the years to make up for their identical price.

I always would get denied at my local Costco because it was inside.

Ewwwww. The hotdogs and churros tho!

Churros are good! I'm not a fan of the hotdogs though, but glad you like them!

It’s not saving. I can go out of my house and buy a pack of paper towels in about 5 minutes. Using Alexa requires planning the magnitude of using Google Calendar for that.

I save over $100 every time I don't go to Costco. Same for Target.

If you only order one or two products, it sounds like you're a good candidate for the Amazon Dash button

Alexa is a hands-free generic solution that I already have.

The people designing this are too wealthy to emphasize. People want to know what those Oreos will cost before buying. If they took panes to address the price anxiety there's no reason people won't start ordering from it.

People were worried about freshness with produce delivery. Amazon tackled it head on by literally calling the service "Fresh". They're going to have to so something drastic here too.

I don't think that's true. Bezos isn't sitting there designing Alexa from his gold-plated desk.

Rather, I think Amazon realized they're a huge tech company that missed the lucrative phone game (despite trying with Amazon Fire). They realized they could be first to market with home automation, so they jumped on it. But they're still an online store, so they obviously had to include "buying stuff" as one of the main features.

Basically, my point is: I don't think their premise ever was "the best way to order stuff is via voice", but rather "we need to let people order stuff since we're Amazon, and we're doing the best we can with the medium".

> I don't think that's true. Bezos isn't sitting there designing Alexa from his gold-plated desk.

No but the people that are working on Alexa (the engineers) are probably too wealthy to empathize as well, a poorly paid one is probably earning more than at least 80% of the population. They might have financial pressures of their own, but they're unlikely to care if the the oreos cost $2 or $3 today.

Software Developers, particularly in Silicon Valley are out of touch with most of the world.

Edit - Just to demonstrate, how much RAM would you say the average desktop has? If you said anything over 4GB you might be out of touch with most people even in a field you know: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/

I'm an "engineer" but I am still concerned with the prices of things and dislike overpaying. It's not that uncommon for engineers of some product or other to not personally use it. And, generally, engineers don't design things, they just build them.

I'm perplexed as to why your target is, specifically, engineers. Why not product managers? Designers? VPs? CEOs? They tend to be much closer to making actual decisions and, as well off as engineers are, CEOs are on a whole other level.

> too wealthy to empathize as well

This is not a thing. Wealth doesn't reduce someone's capacity for empathy. What wealth is likely to do is simply make the individual less acquainted with a certain range of situations, which is something a person can rectify if they wish. Many people don't, and are clueless, but that's another matter, and not limited to wealth.

I don't think it's fair to say that, say, a person who's pushing accessibility at a company is unable to empathize because they're too well off. You're basically blaming people for not having worse lives. How dare they have more GB than most people. This is just crabs in a bucket syndrome.

And Seattle is not in Silicon Valley.

> This is not a thing, Wealth doesn’t reduce someone’s capacity for empathy.

There are actually a number of studies that indicate it might indeed be a thing.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...

Ah, yes, cogsci studies, the ultimate source of truth.

Sure, but, do you know how much a packet of oreos is, without looking it up? Despite having bought them more times in the past than I'd be willing to admit, I only have a vague perception. I know they're under my "this is too cheap for it to be worth me agonizing over the price" filter.

I don't buy Oreos, but I pretty closely know the various /lb prices of some potato varieties. And also that asparagus is surprisingly expensive.

I am not saying that the group of people whom it influences more will not be more aware of things, I'm saying engineers are not really yet the group where ignoring prices to the point of letting a computer arbitrarily buy things makes sense, and I think the "this device is just out of touch because it got designed by rich engineers" holds little water. It seems, rich or poor, nobody really likes using the device that way, and I concur with some of the other posters that maybe this wasn't the ultimate purpose of the device.

Oreos are a "too expensive to bother looking at" item for us. Any major brands that does a lot of advertising fits there. They also taste terrible, but the kids still want them - advertising doesn't appeal to our taste buds after all.

> I'm an "engineer" but I am still concerned with the prices of things and dislike overpaying.

So do I, but unless you're carrying around a spreadsheet with the historical prices of every item you will be over paying for some things. I'm much less sensitive to the daily fluctuations than many/most though because I don't have to watch where every cent is going.

> I'm perplexed as to why your target is, specifically, engineers

I'm not targeting anyone, just pointing out that the empathy line for Joe Average is much lower than the billionaire level.

> What wealth is likely to do is simply make the individual less acquainted with a certain range of situations, which is something a person can rectify if they wish.

Correct, any person can rectify it if they want to, but it would take a concerted effort and even then there are many things they would likely not understand correctly, like the physiological effects of poverty. "Not knowing what you don't know" is also something many from wealthy backgrounds would experience in this regard, making it harder for them to empathize. Perhaps "too wealthy to empathize naturally" would be a better way to say it but I wasn't expecting this level of pedantry.

> You're basically blaming people for not having worse lives. How dare they have more GB than most people.

I'm not blaming anyone for having more GB, I'm blaming them for not knowing what a typical amount is. As software developers would should have some idea what our hardware constraints are shouldn't we? Otherwise we end up with terrible glorified IRC clients using GB's of RAM that our users don't have.

> I'm not targeting anyone, just pointing out that the empathy line for Joe Average is much lower than the billionaire level.

Most engineers are not billionaires. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark.

It's really not beneficial to lump up these groups together like this.

> Perhaps "too wealthy to empathize naturally" would be a better way to say it but I wasn't expecting this level of pedantry.

"Too wealthy to empathize well" is a statement that deserves pedantry. It implies that wealth just makes people incapacitated, but the reality is much more complicated and distinguishing levels or sources of of wealth, something that you are not doing here by lumping engineers and billionaires in the same bucket, is very important here.

If "too wealthy to empathize well" was a realistic statement, the average poor person in the US would have very little empathy because they're technically more wealthy than the majority of the world population, but that is an utterly ridiculous statement to make.

> I'm not blaming anyone for having more GB, I'm blaming them for not knowing what a typical amount is. As software developers would should have some idea what our hardware constraints are shouldn't we? Otherwise we end up with terrible glorified IRC clients using GB's of RAM that our users don't have.

Slack seems to be more popular than the average IRC client, so I am not even sure if this statement makes sense. If anything, resource hogging seems to be mostly an engineering concern, while for the average person, it's much more important that the UX experience is good, which Slack offers and old IRC doesn't, so all these people who you say don't have enough RAM seem to go to Discord and Slack while IRC remains too difficult to use.

Which isn't to say that engineers shouldn't push for better resource utilization, it is after all kind of our job, but it's often an uphill battle against those very users with low RAM.

I don't think their premise ever was "the best way to order stuff is via voice"

Ordering by telephone was completely normal 30 years ago; voice was definitely not an impediment when there was a human on the other end of a phone line able to understand and resolve ambiguity. The only problem with voice UIs is cost. When a machine can replace the human operator voice will work perfectly well.

Yeah something along these lines is my best guess as well.

The fact that an online retailer actually has a physical device in the customers' home is actually a huge thing. Amazon takes away one competitive advantage from the offline retailers.

Just hypothesizing now, but having a device in the customers home could also proof to be invaluable to reduce re-delivery rates in the future.

On the other hand, Amazon has this almost traditional infatuation with their one click patent. If one click is good, no click must be better. The idea of streamlining the buying front-end not only further than anybody asked for but also more than most people are comfortable with isn't new to Amazon.

Also, the browser is where people compare prices much more than in any other buying interface. Blame it on the very high "UI bandwidth" of browsers, which voice lacks. A tiny fraction of users switching to an interface that allows makes bargain hunting hard and thus allows higher margins can be extremely valuable to the vendor.

"Alexa, order Tim Tams."

> The TimTam Pulse Therapeutic Wearable System Wireless TENS Unit + Mobile App Muscle Stimulator for Chronic Athletic Pain Recovery costs $199. You asked me to confirm purchases if they cost more than $15. Are you sure you want to continue this order?

"The biscuits! You stupid computer, I want chocolate biscuits!"

"there are many results for 'chocolate biscuits'. Would you like more information?"

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

> The people designing this are too wealthy to emphasize.

They didn't just think of the idea one afternoon and run with it. Development took years. I'm sure they had plenty of meetings about this problem.

Many products took years of development time, only to come out as ill-thought out and dud. Development time period is not really a scale for the quality of a product.

Some poorly thought out products that come into mind, Windows Vista, 8, IE, Android (earlier versions) - just to name a few.

Much of the problems with Vista weren't actually Microsoft's fault.

A huge portion of the performance and instability issues were due to poor driver support. Vista was a major jump forward from XP, and in many cases the drivers needed to be significantly updated to handle this - and a huge amount of work that needed to happen to handle this, simply didn't occur. Microsoft aggressively pushed for drivers to be updated, and a lot of manufacturer's just didn't listen.

The other half of it was more than half a decade had occurred in between. Resource requirements went up for the OS - this isn't unexpected, and you can see the same between any 5 year jump in most every other OS. Trying to run Vista on a system specced for XP wasn't a great experience, especially when coupled with all of the driver issues.

By the time 7 had come out, Vista was more than fine. The drivers had been updated, people were using machines with more RAM and faster processors. If they had just skipped Vista and released 7, we would have seen the exact same issues - people would still be buying machines with XP specs in mind, hardware manufacturers would have had a shit story on drivers, and we would be talking about how 7 should have been called 8 beta.

I'm a *nix guy so I have plenty of personal bias against Microsoft for a wide variety of reasons and on a wide variety of subjects - but most of the hate for Vista never should have been directed at Microsoft. I've always had a Windows desktop for gaming, even though the vast majority of my time is spend using a Mac laptop or SSH'ed into Solaris or Linux servers, and I've run every version of Windows since 3.1 - Vista, itself, was fine. It was certainly no ME.

My point was the duration of time it takes to develop a product, doesn't necessarily mean it was a well thought out product. Vista was a legendary case - The initial release was a horrible poorly thought out and broken product, that got better over the next few years with each service packs releases.

Driver-compatibility and resources usage should have been taken into account when released. Those two weren't the only major problem with the OS.

How is Microsoft supposed to handle people not doing anything to update drivers? Halt the NT kernel in time so they never have to? Write drivers for everything themselves?

Should they never add new features that will utilize more cycles or more RAM?

I honestly have no idea what you think Microsoft should have done better here.

Windows Vista was just Windows 7 Beta (never should have been called anything else), and Windows 8 was actually a good OS with a single UX flaw. Early versions of Android were pretty much the same, just lacking in features.

I think the same might be the case with Alexa, it's just in its public testing phase.

I think it's more the classic case of get it out there first, we'll figure out how to make money off it later. It's a classic tech play, and certainly Alexa has made a huge impact in the US; Amazon is already in everyone's home, so for them it's just waiting to see how they can monetize it later on.

I'd stop short of saying that Alexa is in everyone's home, among my friends and family I only know two people with any kind of voice assistant.

I remember watching a demo of Viv, a new voice assistant from the original creators of Siri. I believe Samsung bought them. The demo was nothing but spending money without checking reviews or prices. The kicker was a command along the lines of "Viv, book me a nice hotel room in Palm Springs for Labor Day weekend." I'm relatively well off compared to the general population and I would never spend a fraction of the money this guy burned through in the demo so aimlessly.

Narowcasting to the rich child-free urban hipster segment. First thing I did was disable voice ordering, or my kids would have ordered 75 xbox consoles by now.

Its worth considering that buying an echo doesn't necessarily show up in toilet paper sales; it might show up in amazon music, or audible audiobooks. My amazon music purchases went from zero to a very small amount. Alexa does audiobook reading better than my phone apps, and obviously doesn't drain my phone battery. I've spent more on audiobooks than I have on echo dots.

Good point - until it can distinguish voices, this is potential problem.

It has been able to do this for some time.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16460120/...

I have Google Home, and Alexa. To my girlfriend's great dismay I like to talk to my devices and tell them inane things. I once told them both that "I love my dog".

Google Responded: We love dogs too woof woof!

Amazon Responded: Would you like to buy dog food?

I tried that with my Echo, and it responded "Hmm...I don't know what you mean".... nothing about buying dog food.

But I think you just didn't ask the response that the developers anticipated -- I asked "Alexa, do you like dogs?" and it responded "I don't have a dog, but if I did, I would name it Astro".

Siri responded: I don't understand what you mean..

I Have/Had Alexa, since been disconnected out of annoyance.

We were using it entirely as a kitchen timer, but it would say things like

"Sorry I didnt catch that"

And that happened enough times that I felt like I didnt want it constantly listening. Annoying + creepy feeling.

Now that Amazon is restricting items to Prime members, they have past the threshold of 'good company' to 'company'.

Amazon’s web site is its main drawback. They have way too many options with many different prices. I can’t just order a USB cable because I don’t know if it’s the best option or not. I have to look at, at least, a few of them to see if it’s a genuine one and some thing I want before I order. Something like that does not lend itself to be ordered on the voice interface.

I was going to ask, I don't own any Alexa devices, so I was wondering about discoverability of products. Amazons product search is notoriously bad and subject to hijacking by creative sellers, so how is it even possible to order anything using Alexa?

Unrelated, but I don’t own Ann a Alexa or any of Aamzon’s Hardware because once Bezos tried to remove all security from their phones. Even though he reversed it later on it just shows you their thought process.

Any more info on this? I’ve tried finding articles but can’t seem to.

Here you go - https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-switch/wp/20...

I have an Alexa in every room of my house. But ordering things is too cumbersome by audio only. And even reordering is a no go. I need to see what I paid last time and compare a bit. I've found that a lot of items I might want to reorder can go way up in price.

I think the vin diagram of Alexa owners and those with lots more money than time, that don't care about a good deal has little overlap.

If you don't mine me asking, what do you use an Alexa in every room of the house for?

Mine provide a stereo service and control my aircon and lights, housewide

You can enable a nice intercom feature if you want "Alexa call kitchen"

She also makes clocks obsolete "what time is it" also arithmetic and spelling is near 100% accurate, although obviously very slow because of the speech UI. "Alexa what time is it in Brisbane?" "The time in Brisbane is 11:27 pm" uh OK I'll call client tomorrow.

It’s been a bizarrely good talking point with dates who make it back to my place, too.

Control the lights, thermostat, intercom system, playing music, ask the time, set a timer (especially helpful in the kitchen with sticky hands), ask the weather, wake up alarms, and on and on.

As someone who works in ads, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing. CTRs and conversion rates in the low single digits can be significant businesses at scale. Search ads, display ads, and mobile phone games all run on minuscule conversion rates and yet drive huge revenues off of a combination of a large number of interactions and a head of users who purchase a disproportionate portion of revenue.

Also, consider the converse of this: 98 percent of users use Alexa for something other than traditional shopping. That's huge! Playing music? That's revenue. Playing a movie? That's revenue. Asking a question? That's traffic not being sent to a traditional search engine.

Also don't discount the value of having a toehold in someone's home. At the end of the day, this isn't a shopping play, this is a platform play. That device can be leveraged to sell new products, push new services, and enhance loyalty to the Amazon brand and ecosystem.

I sell on Amazon and a huge issue I see is that my items frequently get their Alexa keyword changed.

This is partly because I am not a leader in my niche, but it is frustrating because I cannot advertise the fact that you can order through Alexa. (My guess is the ROI would be negative, but it's something I want to test)

This leads me to believe that you could say "Alexa, order diapers" today, and again 3 weeks from now, and get completely different brands, sizes, etc.

I can't believe that someone would just trust Alexa to order 'diapers', at the very least you'd specify the brand and the size, "Alexa order pampers for a 10 kilo child".

Someone else mentioned USB cables and I don't think I would trust even that to Alexa. "Alexa. Order me the cheapest 1.5m USB cables which isn't of questionable quality, but keep it below $5."

Here again I think brand is important, you order things without looking when you have confidence in the quality.

I was an early adopter to Alexa. (I even made a skill called history facts). I have also purchased things with it . The things I have purchased are mainly consumables that I have purchased before.

Note that even if you don’t buy anything from Alexa it gives you notifications if your packages are at the door .

I have not used Alexa, but in the past I have used Subscribe & Save to auto-order consumables. I found that even ordering consumables was a pain as products were constantly being discontinued in favor of a "new and improved" version (e.g. new packaging), or running out of stock, or the price would change drastically, etc. At the end of the day I probably spent more time worrying about and managing my subscriptions than if I just opened up my laptop or phone and placed a brand new order. As a price-conscious consumer I feel like I would have the same experience with Alexa.

At least with Subscribe & Save the 15% discount made it almost worthwhile.

I've bought a few things as well, it was always a repeat item.

Alexa, order more deoderant. She was able to figure out that I wanted the same deoderant that I've ordered the past 10 times.

> Note that even if you don’t buy anything from Alexa it gives you notifications if your packages are at the door .

How do I enable that?! I've had four Echos since they were first released and I've never had them notify me of an Amazon package delivery.

They added it a while back but I think it was default disabled. If you go to settings in the Alexa app->notifications->shopping notifications, the toggle is in there.

The "Alexa buy me expensive headphones" is a bit unfair towards Amazon. I'd guess the intended purchases are those where you know enough about the product that you don't need to look.

So if you order a certain brand of coffee or toilet paper regularly, you can order those without being too concerned.

Things that you realise you're out of when walking around the house and want to re-order them before you forget.

Let me just hand my credit card to the car salesman and tell him "buy me a car." I mean, the only thing advertisers want more than your attention is the ability to make your purchases for you.

People shouldn't buy things through Alexa because they shouldn't trust the people who made it. They made it to make a profit, and it'll do that or die trying. It's not there to make your life easier.

I mean, it doesn't have to be like that. There's plenty of profit to be made in offering a convenient product that makes your life easier without being evil, because if it makes your life easier then people inherently will want it. The problem is that the [awkward] ergonomics of ordering things through voice doesn't pair well with the way Amazon works.

I think that's maybe why Amazon has seemingly decided to put more emphasis on home automation instead of shopping and rely more on the halo effect keeping you in their ecosystem. I think they launched the Echo not really knowing how people would use them and are evolving them as they go.

I'd take it even one step further and say people shouldn't even have an Alexa (or Google Home, et. al.) in their home at all. There are so many downsides, and after you get past the "cool new technology" factor there are relatively little upsides.

It would be better, more worthwhile, and a hell of a lot more interesting to research and figure out how to create your own "voice assistant" type of device that's hosted locally and doesn't transmit everything that's said in your home back to some company's servers. [and don't give me any of that 'they're not listening to everything' crap -- that's bullshit. if things can be abused they will be]

First world problems, but “Alexa, broadcast ‘dinner is ready’” is just amazing. Or, “Alexa, drop in on [child’s] room” to remind them about X.

Also timers, light switches, and playing music to the surround sound from a Bluetooth connection to the receiver...

We didn’t own one when we lived in Brooklyn, but they are all over my house in the suburbs. I don’t apologize for my love fest. But I won’t use it to order anything. Add something to lists? Definitely. Make a purchase decision? Ha!

Alexa is worth it just to turn off/on light switches, get the time and weather occasionally.....really turning on and off the lamps in various rooms is very convenient though.

You're willing to give up the personal privacy of you, your family, and any guests in exchange for turning off light switches without getting up?

With three kids, a two story house plus basement? Yes.

And I imagine you probably carry a listening device with built-in locator that surveillance states can use to track your every move any way. All for the convenience of being able to make phone calls (or, more ironically, check Facebook).

At this point in the game, privacy is an illusion. So I might as well enjoy telling Alexa to “turn off the basement lights” on my way to bed every night.

The answer to stopping ubiquitous pervasive surveillance probably isn't installing more ubiquitous pervasive surveillance.

It's clear many people feel there are benefits to owning one of these devices, but it does seem all of the benefits you are listing can be achieved without making such a sacrifice to a giant multinational conglomerate with a poor history of user rights and privacy.

With your comment “Alexa, drop in on [child’s] room”, the point that immediately came to mind is that Alexa doesn't drop in. Alexa is always there. I guess a lot of it will come down to whether you believe that:

a) Amazon will honour whatever promise they have with the consumer not to monitor them/keep records of your communications safe

b) That normalising such devices will not lead to their expanding use in direction you do NOT agree with in the future

c) That the device, system and amazon servers your and your families information is stored in is secure from being taken control over by third parties.

Personally, I think b is the biggest concern, as I believe arguments similar to yours (you already carry a smartphone) will be replaced in the future with (you are already recorded by alexa) to justify further things I would consider to be beyond reasonable in a free democratic society (whats wrong with a little facial recognition, etc).

Remember The Clapper?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny8-G8EoWOw

Seems like a solution for the privacy minded? (Wouldn't work in my house though because all might lights are switch controlled ceiling lights.)

DISCLAIMER: I have no idea how Alexa controls the lights.

How exactly is using Alexa giving up personal privacy? The device isn't recording your conversations you realise?

No, I don't realize. And neither should you, because you honestly cannot. It runs closed-source software and communicates with servers out of your control. Unless you are an engineer who works for Amazon directly in the smart-gadget department there is no way you could positively know with certainty.

Amazon isn't providing these devices out of the kindness of their hearts. They are a for-profit enterprise, they do not care about making your life "easier" -- they want your money. They do not give a damn about anything else, and I do not believe that it's overly-paranoid to say that if you think otherwise then you're fooling yourself. It has been proven time and time again that if a thing can be abused by others for their own gain then they will be, almost without fail. Be it the government, a company, an individual, whatever.

Amazon has already done the hard work by getting the device into your home (which you paid them to do. and walked it into your own front door yourself). It's a marketers wet dream, and we all know -- or, at least we should know by now -- how sleazy marketing is. Do you really trust them to not use that always-on microphone? Do you actually trust that they are deleting any "non-relevant" data, or even keeping the 'relevant" data safe and out of the hands of others? I do not. You shouldn't either.

It has always baffled me the things people are willing to be duped out of under such a simple guise as "convenience". I've never been able to wrap my head around it. And I refuse to buy into the defeatist attitude of "privacy is an illusion" -- that's a load of crap.

> They are a for-profit enterprise, they do not care about making your life "easier" -- they want your money.

Interestingly, one way they can get my money is by making my life easier. And I'm not the only one who is happy to pay for that. In which case it makes perfect sense for them to care very much about making my life easier, as it is essential to their profits...

> "voice assistant" type of device that's hosted locally and doesn't transmit everything that's said in your home back to some company's servers.

Apple will sell you exactly this and it even comes with much better speakers than the other "intelligent speaker" products. But it's Apple, so every "tech person" on the internet must hate it.

Isn't Siri cloud-based for HomePod?

I can see value in adding things to your shopping cart for later review.

I only shopped with Alexa once because there was a special deal if I did.

What I do find helpful is that Alexa notifies me when my orders are delivered. Often UPS leaves packages at the other end of my long driveway, and near-immediate notification means I go out there and get them before they get lost, stolen, covered in snow, etc.

I don't trust a "smart" device to spend my money. The first thing I do when I get a new Echo is disable the ability to make purchases.

I really like my Echos, but yeah, I have never bought anything over it. It's the first thing I turned off and I've never missed it.

I use echos all the time and order from Amazon all the time. Those are almost complete separate. Twice those paths crossed, but only because Amazon did something crazy like sell a box of Cliff bars for half what Costco does. They got me to try ordering by voice, but I can't see myself doing that again until they sell me some more stuff at cost and ship it free.

Yeah because it only allows Amazon pantry/fresh for a lot of stuff and adds the most expensive items it can find to my shopping cart

I had always assumed the default user behavior was to use Alexa to add things to your cart when you realized you ran out of e.g. paper towels. I've used it that way since I bought it and I've been satisfied so far with the convenience that my Echo adds.

I wonder if they survey accounts for this. If not, seems like a misleading headline.

I'd probably occasionally use it if I could say order me xyz and it'd order the exact same xyz I bought last time, warning me of any price change and asking me to confirm if it's increased. I'm guessing it's about as consistent as an Amazon search though, so I have no trust that it'll do that.

I'm always suspicious of companies simplifying the process of buying luxury goods and services (snacks, headphones, gadgets, boxes, etc). Glad to see that despite Amazon's greatest effort, most people are sensible enough not to order from an e-commerce speaker.

I am not sold on voice recognitions UI. Not self discoverable. Also very unreliable.

It’s funny to watch Leo Laporte and his colleagues on twit.tv triggering their devices by mistake all the time, or having to repeat pretty much all their commands at least twice. These are podcast professionals with a crystal clear diction in a sound proof studio. If it doesn’t work reliably for them, try with a strong spanish or french accent or anyone who doesn’t articulate perfectly.

If you had to make several attempts every time you want to switch on the lights with a button, it would make anyone mad. I don’t understand the success of these devices (if there is success indeed, never sure with the hype).

Of course, and that's why you don't have to make several attempts each time you want to turn on the lights. Sure, sometimes it misunderstands you, but the error rate is similar to that of normal conversation. I never thought I'd like voice control until I got an Echo Dot, but now I'm 100% sold. Of course I don't buy things with it, but I don't buy that much with Amazon anyway...

While I don't ordinarily use Alexa for shopping purposes, I use Alexa on my Amazon Dash for groceries all the time. The dash is magnetized onto my fridge so while I'm cooking, I'll hold onto the record button and add some items to my shopping list. I was down to my last egg just yesterday, so I said "eggs" to Alexa, and it automatically got added to my Amazon shopping cart. The dash also has a feature that allows you to scan the barcode and add it to your cart which I've found useful for replenishing commonly purchased items.

Like with everything, I would be very careful and jumping to conclusions from a TechCrunch article on new initiatives. Behavior patterns don't just suddenly start. It needs work, market education, etc.

Surprise, 99% of people aren't in the 1%.

Jokes aside, all of the people I know who are in the 1% are the types of people who do at least a few minutes of research before buying things like Bose headphones. Do people actually order things like headphones on Alexa? I imagine something like "Oops, this isn't what I wanted, time to wait another few days for a better set" happening.

Not very surprising, voice is a terrible interface for buying random products, even more so when you're talking to a dumb computer. It's what people used to have to do decades ago before e-commerce became widespread. That said I can see Alexa being used as a replacement for Amazon Dash style interactions for those who don't care to shop for price.

I put possible orders on my shopping list with Alexa.

But I'm reluctant to trust it to order Aeropress filters or batteries at a reasonable cost.

Can’t be too surprised, audio just doesn’t feel like a very good interface for browsing even a few different items for quality and price. Especially considering that just about everyone who has an Alexa also has a phone or computer that offers a much better and already learned and setup interface to do the same thing.

It took time for people to start buying things on their phones, too.

I think the real news here is that 50 million devices number... shopping with Alexa can only go up if you have a device first.

It says 50 million "users". I'd be curious how that's counted. 50 million dedicated Alexa devices in current use would definitely be something. But I've got 3 non-dedicated devices that I nominally could use Alexa on, but they're all off. Are they counting me as a user, or possibly three users? Because I'm not.

(I don't want a voice assistant anyhow, but the devices in question are two tablets and an Android phone with the Amazon shopping app. I'm not sure how "Alexa-y" the latter is, I've never fully experimented with it. Hitting the microphone icon says I can order things.)

I will use a voice assistant to add items to a shopping list, but there is no way in hell I am using one to actually order things.

It's inconvenient to use Alexa for shopping, but I use it because returning is free for stuff bought through Alexa.

50 million Alexa users. Wow.

I remain astonished that so many people would choose to install an always-on, cloud-connected listening device in their most private spaces, with utterly no accountability or auditability.

Especially since there's no technical reason for speech recognition to require cloud connectivity.

> I remain astonished that so many people would choose to install an always-on, cloud-connected listening device in their most private spaces, with utterly no accountability or auditability.

You mean after their smartphones and smart TVs and after putting many years’ worth of intimate details on FB despite all the discussions of Zuckerbergs attitude towards privacy? It doesn‘t surprise me at all.

I have 4 different Alexa devices on 2 different accounts. Developed an IoT-Solution for some devices. Was really fun and I really liked developing against Alexa. Amazon also has some neat solutions for user management and overall AWS services are pretty extensive. Would recommend.

That said, I never ever would use Alexa or Alexa-capable devices at home and I doubt many users will use the IoT-functions of the devices in question. It is mostly for marketing to have a voice-interface. But the development was still very fun.

> Especially since there's no technical reason for speech recognition to require cloud connectivity

Never opened the boxes but I think Alexa devices are cheap w-lan capable microphones with very basic speakers and software.

Having a lot of samples definitely helps for voice recognition. And you need some processing power, additionally to as much memory as you can press into that box.

The kind of processing power needed for good-enough speaker-independent recognition at home has been cheap for several years. For speaker-dependent recognition, it's been cheap for decades. Amazon, Google, and Apple like to sell the myth that the cloud is necessary (because processing power!) but it's simply not so. The real reason they say these things is to get your data.

Sure. that is probably very possible to have an offline solution and I would heavily prefer that too. Common smartphone hardware would certainly be enough and then some.

Alexa, buy toilet paper.

Yeah, you're not going to buy a computer via Alexa but for everyday items, it is fine.

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