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Amazon Dash

fresh.amazon.com

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Re: Amazon Dash

#221

Post by kalleboo »

nolok wrote: post #141
scep12 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, if you had an 'always listening phone' like the Moto X, your flow might go something like this: Option A 1. Ask your phone to buy {name of item} 2. Screen turns on, tap to confirm your purchase Option B 1. Find the Dash device 2. Scan the item (if you haven't already discarded or recycled it, and haven't ruined the barcode in the process of opening it) 3. Confirm and pay To me, Dash feels like a (possi…

> 1. Ask your phone to buy {name of item} Outside theory, I don't see that working very well in the real world currently. On amazon fresh website, there are currently 229 results for "green apples" 8 results for "granny smith apples" 2 results for "1 granny smith apples" Same with ham, eggs, or any other products really. Sure, the user could be more specific, but then it gets a lot more work and problematic than simp…

"Phone, order green apples"

"Same type as last week?"

"No, the ones I bought before that"

"OK, ordered XXX apples"

Re: Amazon Dash

#222

Post by [deleted] »

philwelch wrote: post #188
larrys wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it would be faster" Friction is key. The example I typically use is "if the laser printer were in the basement vs. next to your desk how much would you use it?" A device that you can pick up, hit a button, and do your thing has less friction than doing the same on a smartphone.

My smartphone is always within reach for me because I'm addicted to it. This thing? It's somewhere in the kitchen maybe.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Dash

#223

Post by Zotabite »

lucb1e wrote: post #113

Does anyone know how they connect to WiFi? There's like two buttons and one beep for I/O. (Half joking: Or is it a Speak Friend And Enter kind of thing, where you have to speak the WiFi credentials.)

(Full-on joking: you enter the credentials in binary) You press one of the buttons until it goes into AP mode and it beeps. Connect to it and provide your actual WiFi credentials and away it goes.

Can't do speech recognition since that's done in the cloud and won't work without a Internet connection.

Re: Amazon Dash

#224

Post by Zotabite »

elevenfist wrote: post #78

Sounds like this would only real be useful for packaged, processed goods. I'd have trouble trusting the quality of perishable items over the internet...

Amazon Fresh is a little different.

The Fresh warehouses do have cold storage. They are delivered to you in totes/containers with appropriate amount of dry ice.

Same day delivery by drivers that directly work for Amazon.

Re: Amazon Dash

#225

Post by bayesianhorse »

chunkyslink wrote: post #218

Nice try NSA! Seriously though, it worries me that there are more and more 'listening devices' in my home. We've seen what has happened recently with the NSA listening to calls. What is to stop the authorities getting a back door into all these devices and just recording everything?

If this device is designed half-way smart it will have a microphone that is optimized for very close voices and a power management designed for short bursts of activity.

Which means it will be next to useless for the sort of carpet-surveillance the NSA has been accused off.

Re: Amazon Dash

#226

Post by scep12 »

kalleboo wrote: post #221
nolok wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Ask your phone to buy {name of item} Outside theory, I don't see that working very well in the real world currently. On amazon fresh website, there are currently 229 results for "green apples" 8 results for "granny smith apples" 2 results for "1 granny smith apples" Same with ham, eggs, or any other products really. Sure, the user could be more specific, but then it gets a lot more work and problematic than simp…

"Phone, order green apples" "Same type as last week?" "No, the ones I bought before that" "OK, ordered XXX apples"

Steps 2 and 3 may be better in the hands of the consumer -- in other words, while you can get away with probabilistic guesses for an initial query, you'd be better off leaving the consumer with an interface they can pick & choose from instead of trying to pull a Siri.

Re: Amazon Dash

#227

Post by scep12 »

callum85 wrote: post #213
scep12 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First - what's simple about "simply scan the damn barcode"? Simplicity is telling your phone that you ran out of pasta sauce, not stocking a barcode scanner in your pantry. The hardware may be sleek, but amazon's solution most certainly isn't. For a company with amazon's resources, I'd expect more. Next - presuming that you bought something from Amazon, why do you need the barcode? If I recently bought and/or regular…

You're not considering that a lot of people might just prefer to be explicit and specific about purchases. If I see I've run out of pasta sauce, I might want to scan the empty one to reoder it, because it's precise. I definitely wouldn't want to risk vagueness and inaccuracy just for the privilege of using an abstraction like saying "I'm out of pasta sauce" into a phone. What would that achieve anyway? Outsourcing th…

  risk vagueness and inaccuracy
You're scanning a barcode of an item you recently purchased from amazon. Where is the vagueness in querying for that item by type?

In most cases, your pantry has 1 type of each item, which means you've got a canonical mapping from "pasta sauce" to an item in your fridge. That also means you've got a very high probability of mapping the recent purchase of pasta sauce to the query of "pasta sauce." Where is the vagueness?

In the worst case, you've bought two or three different types of pasta sauce, and you'd like to replace just one. Let's be clear - this is most definitely the exception to the rule. In this case, your phone gives you a list of options to choose from -- the list of your N most recently purchased pasta sauces (backfilled by prior orders or popular choices).

Re: Amazon Dash

#228

Post by vuzum »

zanny wrote: post #43
dotBen wrote: post #32

HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we (geeks) don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role. We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy ("My phone can already snap a barcode, I don't need a sepa…

Opening an app is, thankfully, something the tech industry has managed to train the average consumer to do. I'd argue though remembering where you put this thing, or "oh hey the wifi password got changed why isn't the food scanner working?" adds lots more complexity than hitting an app icon. The app route also enables you to have multiple scanners - since the target audience of such a product is probably already heav…

They released this amazing piece of hardware, and then they can use the same technology to complement it with an app. So you have both worlds happy - with or without a smartphone in the house. ;)

Re: Amazon Dash

#229

Post by calvin »

moonka wrote: post #148
gregcohn wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

noting that a $299/year Amazon fresh subscription is required to play, this thing probably amortizes itself and then some pretty quickly. (Increases frequency of orders, increases number of things ordered, likely to increase retention of users ie length of subscription.)

What subscription are you referring to? If you spend $300 a month you get the big radish program which gives you lower minimums for delivery, but other than that there's no subscription program afaik. Edited: I guess in the bay area it's a subscription program. In Seattle there's no subscription so I was confused.

"Amazon Prime Fresh members get the benefits of both Amazon Prime and AmazonFresh for an annual membership fee of $299. Prime Fresh membership is currently available only in the Southern California and San Francisco, CA Metro areas."

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Re: Amazon Dash

#230

Post by crazychrome »

dotBen wrote: post #32

HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we (geeks) don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role. We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy ("My phone can already snap a barcode, I don't need a sepa…

One thing I learnt over the years is as simple as this: don't be blind to challenge the current paradigm. once upon a time it's desktop application on windows. then the search. now it's app on mobile phone.

I think you are on the right analytic route but somehow down to wrong direction. the mass market just doesn't want more than one ways to consume computing. at a given time, vast majority of consumer want to learn exactly one thing (WIMP, google, App with touch support) and then apply the knowledge everywhere. the cost of migration to new paradigm for the mass market is so high that minor mutations would have to live with sub 10% share. (think about MacOS in window's high day, bing/yahoo in google's day, and Nokia).

will Dash have a market? yes. will it be successful? no.

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