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Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

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Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#161

Post by melling »

tomc1985 wrote: post #143
melling wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why you don’t see rapid iteration in the rest of the world. Google, Apple, Amazon can update their voice devices continuously without a local software release. If the next generation voice algorithms needs twice as much hardware, your $30 device will still work because the processing is in the cloud. Video games, for example, have been trying to move to the cloud. Put all the code in the cloud and just send th…

I don't want rapid (rabid?) iteration, I want shit that works . "The cloud" is little more than a hyped-up, glorified business objective; human beings shouldn't have to be connected to the hive mind to enjoy the full benefits of technology. Nothing smacks of SV-style elitism more than the proliferation of "the cloud" And you can pry my locally-installed videogames from my cold-dead hands. I hope every single streamin…

I guess you’ll have to wait until someone serves your market niche.

Hopefully, with 100 million Amazon devices, and growing fast, you’ll have your product within a decade or two.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#163

Post by wvenable »

Cyph0n wrote: post #153
wvenable wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me add: 4. Shopping List. And that's a killer feature for me; it's so damn convenient to use a voice interface to add items to the shopping list as you run out of item that I'd probably replace it just for that.

Same here. One feature I would like is to be able to change where your shopping list goes as I do not particularly enjoy using the Alexa app.

It's possible to access the list via their API so theoretically you could build your own solution. I agree the Alexa app is not good for accessing the lists.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#164

Post by pwthornton »

A lot of people are mentioning discoverability as an issue. That is a core issue. Same with understanding (the idea of once you discover something exists, how easy is it to understand how to fully use it?). Beyond that, we have issues with memorability. It's hard to memorize how to properly even use these voice apps once you learn for the first time.

Here is a full rubric for whether or not a product is well designed: https://uxdesign.cc/the-design-critique-rubric-how-to-determ...

The hardest part might be that most apps for Alexa aren't privledged. You can't just ask Alexa to do the new skill. You have to first open the skill and then ask that skill to do something. "Alexa open the Food Planner app." This hitch in the process makes memorability very poor.

I am an advanced Alexa user, and I almost never use any skills. They just aren't integrated very well. The one I do use is Sonos (and Spotify to power it), which is given priveldged access and allows me to attach an Echo Dot and Sonos speakers to the same room in my house, so that when I say, "Alexa, play The Beatles," Alexa plays the Beatles in the room it hears me in on my Sonos speakers with music from Spotify.

When you use a combo like this, it feels pretty magical, but most of Alexa can't operate like this, so it feels really stitled, and the user experience is quite poor.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#165

Post by tomc1985 »

melling wrote: post #161
tomc1985 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want rapid (rabid?) iteration, I want shit that works . "The cloud" is little more than a hyped-up, glorified business objective; human beings shouldn't have to be connected to the hive mind to enjoy the full benefits of technology. Nothing smacks of SV-style elitism more than the proliferation of "the cloud" And you can pry my locally-installed videogames from my cold-dead hands. I hope every single streamin…

I guess you’ll have to wait until someone serves your market niche. Hopefully, with 100 million Amazon devices, and growing fast, you’ll have your product within a decade or two.

Which is fine, as my life is perfectly great without. I like your assumption that all innovation is supposedly good...

And it's 100 million amazon devices because Amazon pushes them relentlessly and has been for some time. Their utility is questionable, even the article mentions that.

Did you know over 3 billion devices run Java?

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#166

Post by dugluak »

mrlala wrote: post #151
zwkrt wrote: post #136

I was taking with a friend who said ,"people use Alexa like a toaster, we haven't found what this interface will be really good at" But what if it /is/ just a toaster? Tech people tend to have high hopes for technology but technology must serve a purpose and it will go the way of the dodo if the purpose of not strong or clear. For me, having a voice interface for music and calls is enough justification for such a dev…

I agree, why does it have to do a billion things? I use it for, in this order * Music * Kitchen timers while cooking * Setting simple reminders without having to go into a phone app or some crap (alexa, remind me to do X at 10am) * Kids asking random questions (alexa, how many moons does jupiter have) Other random stuff like weather maybe, when a sports game is on... But this is all just pretty basic stuff you would…

I agree with all of the above. Setting a timer was never as easy as it is now with Google (I don't have Alexa). I tell my 5 year old to set a timer for me and all he has to do is say "OK Google set a timer for 15 minutes"

This was "the future" few years ago and we are living in it now :)

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#167

Post by johnnycab »

melling wrote: post #84
smacktoward wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the mouse does have a runaway hit: Microsoft Windows. That being said, it took 22 years to get from Engelbart's original mouse to the first version of Windows that really took off (3.0), so perhaps we're just too early on in this product cycle for the hit to have emerged yet.

I'd say the Alexa is more like birth of the personal computer. Computers weren't very good in the mid 1970's. Now that companies realize there's a product here, there will be an arm's race. Look for big improvements in next decade. Lots of people and billions of dollars are about to go into making these products better.

>I'd say the Alexa is more like birth of the personal computer.

There were advancements in Text-To-Speech and/or speech recognition, stretching back to the early days of PC/Mac e.g. DragonDictate[1] using Hidden Markov Models, IBM ViaVoice[2], latterly Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking[3]. Although, they were not perfect in their early iterations. However, they got progressively better and fairly impressive once trained properly.

I would rather draw comparisons with their current day counterparts like Amazon Polly or Lyrebird[4] et al., than associate voice assistants with a paradigm shift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition#1970-1990

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonDictate

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking

[4]https://lyrebird.ai/

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#168

Post by pwthornton »

portmanteaufu wrote: post #103
abakker wrote: post #87

The problem is that Alexa is just a consumer voice command line. UI discoverability is impossible, and everything that you can do is just a utility that does something else. There are no native apps because everything that it can do is just an IO to something else. If they actually get conversational, this will change, but until then, it’s just a command line with no man page.

> The problem is that Alexa is just a consumer voice command line. UI discoverability is impossible, and everything that you can do is just a utility that does something else. In a way, I think it's even worse than that. I've used Alexa since the Echo was a relatively new product. Back then, I experimented with new phrases and commands often, but was frequently greeted with wrong answers or "Sorry, I don't know how t…

Discovberability is solvable. Amazon has chosen not to focus on solving it, and instead they are focused on sheer volume if skills and ease of use to make them. A lot of Alexa skills can be made in a day.

I'd argue this is the wrong thing to solve for. The best skills take a long time to make and require privledged access. Sonos, Spotify and others have this, and they work amazing. It's the large mass of Alexa skills they were quickly made and that don't have privledged access that are dragging the whole experience down.

And this is entirely Amazon's doing.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#169

Post by eric_b »

"Alexa, set timer for 14 minutes." Great for keeping my iPhone clean while I'm cooking. Otherwise I'd have to try and convince Siri to set a timer...

(But yeah, i agree - definitely nothing very innovative about it. I don't really think voice control is ever going to be the next big thing)

Re: Amazon’s Alexa Has 80k Apps and No Runaway Hit

#170

Post by Resinderate »

Cyph0n wrote: post #153
wvenable wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me add: 4. Shopping List. And that's a killer feature for me; it's so damn convenient to use a voice interface to add items to the shopping list as you run out of item that I'd probably replace it just for that.

Same here. One feature I would like is to be able to change where your shopping list goes as I do not particularly enjoy using the Alexa app.

I had the same problem with google home. I already had a shared (with the SO) google keep note for my shopping list. I wrote a google keep integration with an IFTTT app to solve this, letting me do a "OK Google, we need X" to add X to the list. https://github.com/Resinderate/shopping-list/blob/master/sho...
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