Experiences: Voice User Interfaces

Many brands have explored voice user interfaces (VUIs) by creating some kind of skill for a smart speaker. While that’s a good start, it’s not the optimal way of leveraging voice capabilities for the future.

Instead, you should add voice to your existing apps to complement their current touch user interface. Early adopters such as Spotify have taken this approach and have received universal praise for their voice functionality. Spotify users can keep on using the app just as they’ve always used it, with its traditional touch user interface. Plus, they can use voice commands to control the media player. This is how you should use voice.

Rather than creating VUIs as replacements for your applications’ current user interfaces—as for Google Home or Alexa—create voice capabilities that provide a complementary user-interaction modality for your current user interface. Read More

If you’re in the market for a new speaker, you might have trouble finding one that isn’t labeled smart—or at the very least, voice activated. Maybe that’s just what you’re looking for. In fact, maybe you’re really excited about the idea of controlling some of the lights in your home via voice and are ready to brave the waters of home automation. So you pick up a smart speaker and some expensive light bulbs.

You get home and set everything up, thrilled that you can now ask your smart speaker to turn the lights in your living room on and off and even dim them. When your partner arrives home, you demonstrate this new bit of automation only to receive a cold reprimand for buying what’s basically a $1,000 light switch. Read More

Voice user interfaces (VUIs) such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant have become some of the most useful products in common use. These products have become a very important part of numerous people’s daily lives.

These unique VUI devices and the powerful systems behind them enable users to easily interact with a variety of digital devices and apps using just simple voice commands. An efficient voice user interface can be easy to use, responsive, and even proactive.

If you’re still considering how these technological innovations can help human beings, continue reading this article to find out. Read More