Often or always? Is reading a generic description of a product (menu) seeing the thing?
What about alcoholic drinks in pubs or bars “2 pints of your best and a glass of house red”.
Alexa may not be great for purchasing from Amazon but this isn’t because humans have never shopped using only their voices. Nor is seeing things required.
The dash button doesn’t use voice it hasn’t proved popular either. Various other threads suggest stability of pricing as an issue. Voice ordering may be part of the issue, as might being unable to see the goods. There is likely a number of issues. The fact something doesn’t work doesn’t prove a single explanation.
>People don't shop with their voices and never have.
>They need to see things.
Nyet. Non. Nada.
What world do you live in?
People seeing things and then shopping with their voices are not mutually exclusive actions.
Not only are they complementary, they are very common, and must have been from the dawn of shops.
How many billions of times, worldwide, must people have looked around at some products there, and said "give me 5 foos and 10 bars" at their neighbourhood store or other shop?
IVR is not a good example because it's an annoying interface that people sometimes have to deal with when calling companies. It actually offers pretty poor UX, because users sometimes know what they want when calling but have to wait to hear the options before making a selection. But it's the best we have for over-the-phone interfaces.
Are you someone who orders things using the Echo? If not, are you just playing devil's advocate?
That already exists too, but it's also poor UX because it processes your response slower than a person would, and it sometimes misunderstands what you're saying or asks you to repeat.
For the sake of argument, we can imagine the Echo technology is advanced enough to be on par with speaking to a real person, like your own personal assistant that you trust.
I could see it being useful for recurring purchases when I run out of an item, although I (and I assume most people) get these items from the grocery store. For items you've never purchased before, I could also see it being useful if, like a personal assistant, it prepares a short list of items to choose from based on your purchasing preferences. But I would still rather see the list of the items before making the purchase.
no I don't use the Echo. but I was not playing devil's advocate. I was just arguing against some people's statements on the basis of logic as I see it. do you think there is anything wrong with doing that? I see it happening on hn all the time. and I think it is the only basis for rational discussion. otherwise what should we go on, emotions?
those have their place, but I think are out of place in debates.
>Again, no one buys things using only such an interface.
I was talking about future possibilities, not the past. I would have thought that was clear from my comment. but maybe it was not worded clearly, or maybe you didn't get it.
>I am middle aged and have never done, not even in pre-e-commerce times.
you are not the same entity as everyone else. you are one, they are numerous.
just the fact that you have never done it does not mean that no one else has ever done it, or would not like to do it.
>It is a non-existent behavior, and there was no reason to think Alexa could will it into existence.
non-existent past behaviours can become future existing behaviours.
I meant Amazon building that feature into Alexa, not that Alexa would create it by itself.
> I was talking about future possibilities, not the past.
Why would anyone want to do an audio-only interface? If there were a need or desire for it, it would have popped up somewhere else in society. It hasn't.
> you are not the same entity as everyone else. you are one, they are numerous.
OK, let me rephrase that. I've never heard of a single other person buying a single thing using an audio-only interface. It probably happens, but it's rare enough that it's safe to say Amazon was trying to invent a brand new human behavior, which (I will reiterate) is stupid.
>> I was talking about future possibilities, not the past.
>Why would anyone want to do an audio-only interface? If there were a need or desire for it, it would have popped up somewhere else in society. It hasn't.
what utter rubbish you talk, dude.
you are talking repeatedly past me, that is, not directly addressing my replies, instead, you are going off at a tangent each time. that's not the way to conduct a rational argument. it's often seen as evading the point that the other person made (because you don't have a good answer for it), although it can also be just due to poor logic, and due to talking on the basis of emotion rather than reason.
as an example your illogic, to be precise, and referring to both of our points that I quoted just above:
I talked about the future possibilities, and yet you are continuing to harp on the fact that that innovation has not happened yet. does the fact that something has not happened yet, mean that it can never happened in the future? jay. eff. cee. did people think that mobile phones would happen before they happened? or computers? or cars? or fridges? or so many other modern inventions? maybe for
some of those cases it was predicted, but not for all, damn sure of that. and I bet some of those at least were not needed or desired earlier. still they happened.
quoting one of your above points again, to make another very valid point:
>>Why would anyone want to do an audio-only interface? If there were a need or desire for it, it would have popped up somewhere else in society. It hasn't.
nonsense, on 2 counts:
1. so you think that if there's a need or desire for something in society, it will automatically "pop up"? by the grace of god, maybe?
2. you say it hasn't.
here is another hn user, NotMichaelBay, in this same subthread, who says that it already exists:
>That already exists too, but it's also poor UX because it processes your response slower than a person would, and it sometimes misunderstands what you're saying or asks you to repeat.
so he says that it already exists. I don't think he would be making it up. but to address his point about UX, I think his argument that it is poor UX may be wrong. however I have not replied to it yet and may not do it for some more hours, because I have other things to do too.
but in a nutshell:
voice recognition and voice processing technology has progressed in leaps and bounds. it is much better than it was a few years back. I used to be a skeptic about it then, but nowadays it is so good that I use it many times on a daily basis, including for voice typing these hn comments, at least partially. I just have to make a few edits to correct the mistakes that it makes.
this is an example of a need and a desire (referring to your comment above), that I, at least, did not know about beforehand, but happily use once it is available. but it did not pop up in society just because I needed it or desired it. it happened because someone innovated it.
