It seems that it needs to be said and repeated. I have listened or other people have commented recently about the need to call it voice ‘and’. In one of the talks at Voice Summit about voice search, Dustin Coates mentioned the distinction between voice added vs voice-first vs voice-only. And I think that’s fine and even interesting, especially since they are working on voice search. But what I have a concern, it’s about those that believe that voice-first is voice only. When we say voice-first, here at voicefirst weekly and voicefirst labs, what we mean is the first step in an user interaction with machines. It means voice is the initiator. If later that interaction continues with a screen, with camera lenses like Snapchat just released, with your email or continue to be just voice only it’s a different story. The point is voice-first is not about the whole conversational journey, it’s about the beginning of that conversation, how the communication between human – machine is established. I’m no one to judge you if you already have a whole model built around voice only, but understand, this technology is about integration, where every sense come together (ok smell, i’m sure you’ll come in soon enough). Voice first is about multi-modal, you start with voice and might continue with screen, your phone, your car console. And it’s also multi-device. So for me, this is what voice first means and I don’t think that voiceand will catch up a lot, we may end up with other terms for it. This whole thing reminds me of what Chris Geison mentioned that you should meet your users where they are. And they are all over the place, cars, in their homes, in their phones. So build for spreading your modalities and to be later present in different devices.
Thank you for listening!

P.D The same day this audio was published, Dustin Coates published an excellent article discussing his variations of voice first vs voice added vs voice only. I think it’s good that you have every perspective on the subject. My take is about the field in general and not about the different modalities in which you can deal with voice input and outputs. Enjoy the article, and leave us a comment!

Why put that friend to guide your guests to their table when Alexa can do it for you?

Guests at a recent Donegal wedding were treated to a taste of things to come to contemporary nuptials when Amazon’s Alexa debuted her wedding planning skills at a couple in Harvey’s Point, courtesy of one of their friends who is studying computer science at Queen’s University. The skill allowed Alexa to give guests their table number when they told her their name.

She even added a little sass to her responses.

The creator noted that it’s not a skill available in Alexa skills store as it’s heavily customized for each event. Interesting use case for a voice application. Everything that it’s repetitive, can and will be answer by a smart assistant in the future.

Comment on a news that appeared here.

Thank you for listening, you have a great day and we’ll talk tomorrow

We have several big company news ending the week. Apple hit the 1 trillion valuation, whoa, this was kind of expected to happen eventually but it’s big news. WhatsApp released their business API, this is following rumors between WhatsApp founders and Facebook highest executives over the platform monetization. But what I want to concentrate today is Snapchat.

Snapchat launched two days ago new lenses that respond to voice commands. Lenses are animations on top of your photos and videos in the snapchat mobile app. While the company has offered lenses that involve audio before, this is the first time it has created lenses that actually recognize words, then use its understanding of what was said as a marker that kicks off the lens animation. This is probably the biggest news out there this week, besides Apple valuation, Snapchat is entering the voice first world quietly but surely and they have a strong young audience leaning in to camera first and now voice first. I will be even more excited if they say that we can build applications or ‘lensations’, however they decide to call it. One of the things we listened the most in voice technology world is voice assistants and stats about adoption and competition between manufacturers, however, there are a lot of applications of voice technology that are not necessarily assistant driven and Snapchat is the first company showing the way on voice first out of the assistant. This is also a release that can help make voice commands and interaction more widespread and accepted. I think this is a trend to continue paying attention to. Have a nice weekend, we have an episode coming out tomorrow. Before wrapping up this episode, we sent yesterday this week newsletter, if you haven’t subscribe at voicefirstweekly.com. We have also made available these episodes in Alexa flash briefings in India, in Spotify and in Google Podcasts. You can find us everywhere!

Happy Friday and we’ll talk tomorrow

The duality between Voice and Visual interfaces basically comes down to age old question of visual communication versus audio communication. “Language need not have started in a spoken modality; sign language may have been the original language. The presence of speech supports the presence of language, but not vice versa.”
This shift is leading companies to ask the question of

whether they should continue to invest in the visual interface or should budgets shift to voice?

How does designing UX and UI for sound/voice change our role and the tools we use?
How prepared for the shift is our industry?
What effect will chatting to a machine have on language? We’re all well aware of the effects texting and instant messaging has had! LOL
If this trend is anything to go by, will we need to develop a sound version of icons and emojis? An audio version of shorthand?
Still, with this increased utilisation of the senses, how long will it be before the other two, taste and smell, get in on the action?
Are we moving towards a world that is augmenting our senses
Brain-Computer Interfaces Are Already Here
And now Mr Musk has entered the fray, by funding ‘medical research’ startup Neuralink who are developing neural laces .
Commented from voice vs human interfaces article .