The following explanations actually show how amazing it is that voice apps have grown as much as they have: TL;DR: 1) there’s been no money in it, 2) app discovery is a mess & 3) it’s a new modality. (6/14)
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#1) MONETIZATION. [duh] The App Store fueled a gold rush of desperate devs with dollar-sign eyes and their version of a fart app. There were also some great apps. But the flood of novelty gag apps speaks to why we should aim for quality over quantity. (7/14)
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Meanwhile, Amazon & Google just introduced monetization for voice apps last year. And neither is offering devs monetization options equal to what Apple was offering in the App Store. (8/14)
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#2) VOICE APP DISCOVERY & INVOCATION IS A MESS. In our research
@AnswerLab, we found 19% of smart speaker owners had never heard of “skills” or “actions”; 33% had heard of them but don’t know what they are. 1/5 of device *owners* had *never heard of* 3rd party apps. (9/14)1 reply 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
i,e., smart speaker manufacturers have done a terrible job in onboarding new users and have sown confusion with their proprietary naming (Amazon=skills, Google=actions). Many users don’t even know they need a companion mobile app for their smart speaker. (10/14)
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Further, in user interviews, I had participants try to order a pizza from Dominos w/ Google Home. Google Assistant gave a list of nearby locations. You have to say “Hey Google, TALK to Dominos.” (11/14)
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Alexa is even worse with app discovery & invocation, though both Alexa & gAssistant *sometimes* recommend voice apps. (12/14) https://voicebot.ai/2017/09/05/amazon-alexa-now-recommends-third-party-skills/ …
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#3) GUIs WERE FAMILIAR, VUIs ARE RELATIVELY NEW. iOS Apps intro’ed gestural interactions to the masses, but were still basically computer applications built for a new form factor. VUIs are a dramatically different modality. One to which users need to acclimate. (13/14)
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Honestly, this whole thing is a superficial response that doesn’t even delve into some of the more fundamental flaws with voice apps as a schema that I might explore when I’m not about to spend the day in user interviews re: the UX of the built environment. (14/14)
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P.S. I’m sure
@BrianRoemmele has more to say on this than I do—perhaps he’ll talk about it on another podcast with@reneritchie?1 reply 1 retweet 2 likesShow this thread
Chris, thank you! Wonderful insights! Would love to dive into this more.
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