Experiences: Voice User Interfaces

Both Web and mobile innovations are progressing at an incredible rate, making any lack in these essential technologies a critical issue for any company. As long as a decade ago, a poorly optimized Web site could lead to your losing traffic and revenues. Today, businesses cannot afford to ignore technology trends. Don’t let your business fall behind the technology curve.

Creating voice user interfaces (VUIs) for mobile apps is the hottest trend right now—and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Voice is a natural user interface. Some leading brands have already boosted awareness of their mobile apps and increased customer engagement by adding voice capabilities that are powered by existing VUI platforms. For example, Snapchat has launched an in-app voice assistant that is based on SoundHound, which lets users trigger filters with voice commands, immediately improving user engagement and loyalty. Pretty soon, users won’t just appreciate the greater functionality and friendliness of a voice-powered mobile app, they’ll expect it. Read More

What will be the voice-technology winner of tomorrow—voice-first or multimodal user interfaces? Those working in the voice user-experience sector are avidly discussing this hot topic—and UX researchers, UX designers, developers, marketers, and entrepreneurs may find it of interest as well.

In this article, I’ll define the terms voice first and multimodal, using current products as examples, explore some use cases and rationales for different types of user interfaces, consider contemporary research, and conceptualize the future of voice user interfaces. Should you keep your product’s visual features? Yes, because, ultimately, voice-enabled, multimodal user interfaces will be the preferred user experience. 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