The main point of my talk was to look at what is great about voice as an interaction method, and think about how we can leverage that to deliver more magical experiences that deliver on the promise of yesterday’s virtual assistant of tomorrow.
For each of my three primary element, I created a set of lenses to pose to try to challenge our design directions.
Familiarity
Challenge:
How can we leverage the existing knowledge and skills of our users to improve their user experience?
Lenses:
- Can we leverage any metaphors to help users build mental models quickly?
- Can we use existing frameworks so that users will know how to navigate our interface?
- Can we harness the intuitive nature of language to help users convey desired outcomes?
Complexity
Challenge:
How can we give users ways to provide input in more complex manner to save time and effort?
Lenses:
- Can we introduce complexity by allowing users to input information with greater density?
- Can we provide users with complex starting points (start with context) which they can adjust and react to?
- Can we give users affordances for actions in the real world, or collect information like biometrics, that will translate into valuable input in the smarthome network?
Convenience
Challenge:
How can we mitigate the barriers to action to make interactions more accessible and convenient?
Lenses:
- Can we deliver the interaction to the user instead of the user coming to the interaction?
- Can we help users quickly dig deep into interfaces to find what they want?