The ever emerging connection we share with our digital products has been growing stronger. At this point, our favorite products have become indispensable in our daily lives. To many of us, it’s no longer just a mobile phone, or a computer but rather something you need to feel connected to family and friends, help us work and live more efficiently. We notice ourselves leaving more and more things over to our digital products, trusting them to help and guide us in our busy lives. Professionals with a busy life used to have personal assistants. Now, all Big Five have collaborated and introduced virtual personal assistants to every consumer. This will permanently change how we will interact with technology. Here is why voice-user interfaces (VUI) will provide the next best user experiences and are revolutionizing the way we interact with technology.
Your Assistant Will Assist You With Anything
For example, Skills enable designers and developers to create a more personalized experience when utilizing personal assistant, Alexa. For users, it is as easy as downloading a new app from the App Store. There is an endless list of skills on how personal assistants can help you with whatever it is you must do. For example, a modern meditator can just ask Alexa to open Headspace to enjoy his daily meditations. Your virtual assistant will even help you do things around the house, and you have IoT to thank for it.
From robotic vacuum cleaners to smart microwaves, you can get it all on Amazon to set up your smart home. The increase in IoT products being introduced to the market is increasing and the adoption of these devices is growing exponentially. According to Statista, it is expected that there will be 75.44 billion devices installed worldwide in 2025. Besides Alexa, other virtual assistants such as Google and Siri can also help you do things around the house using only your voice.
Transformation In User Experiences For The Visually Impaired
The best part of VUI is that it has the potential to make a positive change in the lives of the visually impaired. Visually impaired people now also have a personal assistant through technology as well as better web accessibility.
Artificial Intelligence Will Make Our Virtual Assistants More Intelligent
Although you can make virtual assistants do almost anything with skills, some do not believe in the power of VUI because of the lack of ability of these robots to understand what they must do. However, the fast-growing ability to make computers act like humans due to machine learning and natural language processing will make sure that computers understand users and therefore making human-robot interaction much smoother.
So What’s The Real Power Of VUI?
The design of impeccable voice-user interfaces could result in greater empathy from the user’s side towards computers which can form conversations just like humans are able to. We have not reached this point with the current virtual assistants on the market yet, but with the rapid rise of AI, voice-user interfaces will play a crucial part in revolutionizing how we interact with technology.
I believe VUI will help computers come to life. After all, when I asked Alexa if she’s alive, she said “Yes. Artificially.”