No one made the case of voice technology for older adults like Heidi Culbertson did at Voice Summit (I’ll leave the link of her talk in the episode notes – 92). Coming from a personal experience Heidi had one of the best talks I assisted about voice first design, and although it was directed to older adults, it had insights for designing voice apps including everyone in the loop. And I got interested. In this episode I’m going to outline some of the opportunities for the future of voice first for older adults.

The differences between Voice First technology and prior technologies apply to all users. For seniors, it’s a leap forward. What has inspired senior communities to start their pilots and programs? According to the The Future of Voice First Technology and Older Adults 2018 report, they see that Voice First is easy, cheap, useful, smart and connected.

This are the areas where the report foresee more opportunities:

• The setup stage: provide an out-of-the-box setup for the uninitiated. What about an Alexa in the box or a Google Home in the box, pre configured for senior living firms?
• Multi modal, design for older adults should include as many options as possible, so when voice only is not enough, touch can become a second option.
• Reactive and proactive Are you ok : Should the device be proactive rather than only respond to a wake word? One example is developed by LifePod Solutions, in pilot with Commonwealth Care Alliance, – it can be configured to initiate speech without a wakeup word, including “It’s 4:00, did you take your Lasix?”
• Supporting caregivers. “Users found it helpful to hear their loved one’s voice in emergencies.”  A Voice First medical alert device could bring the sound of a loved one’s voice and perhaps visual image to the caregiver, boosting confidence that all is okay. If Siri can step up, with the improvements Apple just announced to the Apple Watch for trip detection and heart rates, devices like the Apple Watch can become an interesting offering for vulnerable populations.
• One of the obvious one, as highlighted in one of the Echo Spot ads, where a family install an echo spot for an older adult and then they can see and talk each other. VoiceFirst can help mitigate social isolation of older adults.

As we continue to live longer and healthier, assisting older adults is one of the ways companies can leverage voice technology to provide better care.

Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe, like, comment and share this episodes. My name is Mari, and you can find me on Twitter as voicefirstlabs and on Instagram @voicefirstweekly, follow us, the more you follow the more we love.  Thank you for listening and you have a great day!

So as you probably heard already, at least in terms of voice, there is not a lot to say from Apple special event. Not in voice tech the software side, but not about AirPods and only a slightly mention of new features for the HomePod. Shortcuts should be generally available on iOS 12 to be released in September 25th.
Reflecting on Apple’s position on voice technology yesterday as the event was wrapping up I thought about Microsoft and mobile. It’s the classic example this nowadays of missing a trend in technology. Along with the profound consequences it might have. And then the recent podcast of the knowledge project came along and Ben from Stratechery said a phrase in a way that really resonated with me: Microsoft didn’t miss the mobile trend, they were just fundamentally unequipped to compete in it.

The discovery of “anomalies” during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere “puzzle-solving” of the previous paradigm.

from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions of Kuhn in paradigms shift. Apple didn’t not put a lot of emphasis on voice tech, or audio, which I was expecting some AirPods announcement or improvement. The Cupertino company continues to play to their present strengths on the Apple Watch and iPhone hardware improvements. Is it possible that, as alarming as it may sound, Apple is unequipped to compete in a VoiceFirst World? Let me know your thoughts.

Hi guys, today there is two exciting news, one: I played with the presentation host from the just launched amazon Sumerian host feature. Amazon Sumerian is a VR/AR service by AWS. Last night, I discovered they launched this feature to have someone doing a presentation in a VR environment and decided to try it. Once again, the Revolution will be synthesized, but also our companies on boarding processes, customer services and some of our media.
Amazon Sumerian let’s you choose from Amazon Polly synthesized voices and configure gestures with the speech, SSML, add audio songs as background and much more I haven’t played around yet, quite powerful. Check out the example I made in the link in the episode notes at voicefirstweekly.com/flashbriefing/90. You need Chrome or Firefox updated to see it.
This an easy example of what the future of selected episodes and tutorials in VoiceFirst Weekly will look like. Hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think. Find the link in this episode notes!
Remember, today’s Apple Special event. We are all looking forward to what the Cupertino crew has to say, in our case, especially related to voice, Siri, conversational messages. Excitement doesn’t cover it. I don’t want to speculate what are they going to announce, let’s just talk tomorrow about. Thank you for listening!

Amazon Sumerian released a guide on how to use the host feature.

I was going over Cathy Pearl post on Sample Dialogs: The Key to Creating Great Actions on Google and one part of the post, really caught my attention:

With a conversational interface, the content itself is part of the structure, so design becomes even more important.

The post main goal is to highlight why sample dialogs are necessary and the pitfalls to avoid when creating them. As you can see or if you are listening, hear, this is aligned with what we talked yesterday about creative vs technology. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a software engineer by trade, I love technology, I want to jump into writing code as much as the next guy or gal, however, when I advocate for creatives first for voice applications, what I mean is what Cathy put into words better: the content is the structure. The conversation is the voice app.

For platform companies, like Amazon and Google who are building the tools technology comes first, they need the natural language processing experts, deep learning, et all, but for those like us building on top of this platforms, technology comes second.

I wonder what’s your design process, how you go from idea to voice skill? What’s your take on this technology vs creative thing I have gotten myself into? Comment on Twitter directed to @voicefirstlabs or Instagram @voicefirstweekly.

My name is Mari, you have a great day and we’ll talk tomorrow!

You might have heard me say that voice platforms are the platform for creatives. Then last week after Amazon announcement of 50 000 skills I did an episode basically laying out the work Amazon Alexa team is doing with its developer evangelists has being in my opinion instrumental for those numbers. So can you make up your mind already? Is it creatives or developers? Short answer both. Longer answer, it’s about timing. Right now as platforms, you want to drive as many people as possible to your environment to build applications. It doesn’t matter if most of those applications are fart apps, what matters is the visibility and exposure to other developers. Listen, developers like to play with new stuff, I’m speaking for a friend. A lot of developers are early adopters of technology and they bring others with them. So in this stage, what this platforms should look for is the more developers creating for them. However, the best voice applications are about the conversation and the humans in it. And that’s when you need the scriptwriters, the creatives, the sound engineers, the musicians. Especially for voice games, that are looking for engagement.

Zach Johnson, founder of Xandra the conversation design company behind Hollywood Alexa skills like Westworld, said in an exclusive interview with Variety that when he had to hire staffers for a startup to build bots and other conversational experiences, he didn’t tap into Silicon Valley’s developer community.

He made use of the fact that the underlying technology was being built by big tech companies with deep pockets, and hired playwrights, actors, and musicians — creatives who knew how to tell a story.

The underlying technology is there. The important part is to tell a story.

Thank you for listening, thank you for staying with us and make grow the listeners. I’m going to do an episode answering your questions! Send them to mari@voicefirstweekly.com or in Twitter direct messages to @voicefirstlabs.
Have a great day and we’ll talk tomorrow!