The Battle for Voice UIs (Medium Post)

It's hard to imagine that Amazon has sold over 5.1 million Echo devices since the product’s launch in Dec. 2014. When the product launched, most people couldn’t even describe the product, let alone conceptualize the capabilities of the device.  For those of you not familiar with the Echo Device, it is a virtual assistant that allows you to control the device with the sound of your voice. No more physical contact with a device, and certainly no more inputting data by hand to control an application.

Echo, Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Google Home appear to be the most popular voice activated personal assistants on the market today. This is just a start; one day all computers and devices will be controlled via the human voice. (Who knows...perhaps one day all devices and computers will be controlled by human brain waives.) Clearly an expansive network of computers using voice based platforms can and will lead to some significant challenges for both creators of the technology and the end user. The article "Forget personal assistants, The real battle is for voice UIs", points out some of these challenges. No doubt the real battle will indeed be for voice user interfaces.


medium.com/@gigastacey/forget-personal-assistants-the-real-battle-is-for-voice-uis-e86697fc82d1#.u4037q2bl