Challenge of Voice and Bots

There is no doubt that technology is improving in how we interact with it. But as users, it's not going to be an easy transition unless it's easy and actually used.

I think the most critical flaw in the adoption of voice technology is knowing what it is capable of doing. The simplest of tasks like dictation and setting an alarm are presumed. But since voice commands within applications has become recent technology, users don't know what is possible and more importantly what's not. No user wants to use voice commands only to be denied, ultimately wasting their time. So most users don't even attempt voice commands unless they know what can be done.

There hasn't been a good method of learning what is being implemented as time goes on. Even avid technology readers miss what is being added. For example, if you have a "Shopping List" in Google Keep, you can say an OK Google command "Put a penguin in my shopping list" and it'll add "A Penguin" into your Keep list.

I'm sure as time goes by we'll adopt voice commands more easily as the technology advances (e.g. machine learning, increased accuracy) and becomes more of the norm.

As with the voice technology, conversational bots will face the same adoption obstacle, educating the user what is possible and what is not. Bots are going to be crucial technology for personal and business use in the near future. But it's going to be somewhat dangerous for businesses that implement bots early, as it can easily create a stressful and negative experience for customers who expect too much or just don't know how to use bots (e.g. expecting bots to be real people). Hopefully, there will be a more unified ecosystem than there has been with IoTs (which has been disappointingly slow).