A conversation about voice interactions

A while back, several of us in the studio had a little spontaneous discussion about voice user interfaces over email. We thought we'd share some highlights. Please pile on in the comments section.

Steve Calde: What are people’s experiences with voice user interfaces? [A client] is interested in learning more about how to document voice-activated systems, and wondered if we had any experience to share.

Alan Cooper: You could also suggest to them that voice interfaces are inherently bad and will never work very well.

Dave Cronin: Why are they inherently bad?

I agree that they often are bad, but it seems to be more an implementation issue than something intrinsic about voice commands.

Stefan Klocek: The reason they are inherently flawed is that we use our voice for other more important things in addition to the system level input we would like to give to our DVD player. There is no way for the voice interface to understand that the context has changed and that I am no longer giving it a command, rather I am now giving my child a command or am simply muttering to myself. Of course we could imagine a system in which we indicate context by saying “DVD player - pause”, but this is adjusting my input to the deficiencies of the system.

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Crappy interface embarrasses Sulu on national television—not cool

Wanna Bet is a new show on ABC wherein celebrities bet on whether “ordinary” people can accomplish extraordinary things. Whichever celebrity has the most money at the end of the program gets to donate it to the charity of his or her choice. The way it works is that the show introduces the ordinary person, describes the (usually very odd) action this person is going to attempt, and the celebrities write down their prediction and bet amount. The attempt is made, the person succeeds or fails, and then the celebrities reveal their bets to much fanfare.

So far so good, right? The trouble is that there is some kind of disconnect in the betting process. On the first episode George Takei (better known as Sulu from Star Trek) excitedly revealed that he had guessed correctly and had bet $20,000. The show’s hosts, however, informed him he had only bet $2,000. For anyone not employed as a designer of interactive systems, it looked like George Takei was having a senior moment. It was embarrassing. The other celebrities on the show spent the rest of the episode pretending to have flubbed their bets to make up for it.

So where’s the failure here? George Takei is getting on in years; maybe he’s just not very comfortable with technology. Leaving off a zero is an easy mistake, right? Maybe, except that in the very next episode of the show, the same thing happened to comedian Melissa Peterman who thought she bet $5,000 but “really” bet $6,000. She’s only 37 and sharp as a whip. The show is now two for two, and I would argue there is a failure in the system.

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The Birds Nest & the television experience

Amazement operated on many levels during the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. During each performance, my mind struggled to process what I was seeing. What is this? How in the world did they pull this off? Where does an idea like this even come from?

TV: These small boxes will now take the form of a keyboard, and the keyboard will sprout a peach blossom.
Doug: ... Huh.
TV: Now the small boxes, which have made precise, machine-like movements for the last ten minutes, will reveal that humans have been operating them the whole time.
Doug: ... Wait, what? ... How ...
TV: Now a globe will rise, and dozens of people will fly around it in precise circles.
Doug's brain: [explodes]

In a Wahington Post editorial, Roger K. Lewis recently wrote that NBC didn't once mention the architects of the venue, Beijing National Stadium. Hmm. That's funny. I didn't mention them during the telecast either, but that's because my brain had been reduced to a pre-verbal state.

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