Designing Voice Experiences Smashing Magazine. Voice based interfaces are becoming commonplace. Voice assistants such as Siri and Cortana have been around for a few years, but this past holiday season, voice driven devices from Amazon and Google made their way into millions of homes. Recent analysis from Voice. Labs. 1 estimates that 2. As experience designers, we now have the opportunity to design voice experiences and interfacesDownload past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis by ABC News for free. How to Create a JARVIS Like AI Assistant. Creating a JARVISlike AI assistant involves selecting an avatar named Dave. Youll need to download the Rainmeter. Visit http to play The Voice Predictor Game and for all The Voice UK 2013 news. Leanne Jarvis wins a place in the Live Shows. J. A. R. V. I. S. A. I. system that controls Tony Starks Mansion. He was named after Starks childhood butler, Edwin Jarvis. He also helped Stark develop the Iron. Market Place for all MegaVoiceCommand Products. Get Best Deals fo MVC Plugins, Scripts, AddOns, Profiles, Rainmeter Skins and Lots More. J. A. R. V. I. S. Stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, also stylized as JARVIS, or Jarvis, is a highly advanced computerized A. I. developed by Tony Stark. Voice assistants such as Siri and Cortana have been around for a while. Here are the steps involved in designing voice experiences. Use your voice to ask for information, update social networks, control your home, and more. Build it yourself with offtheshelf hardware, and use our documentation. A new interface does not mean that we have to disregard everything we have successfully applied to previous interfaces we will need to adapt our process for the nuances of voice driven interfaces, including conversational interactions and the lack of a screen. We will look at how a typical genie in a bottle works, discuss the steps involved in designing voice experiences, and illustrate these steps by designing a voice app for Alexa or Skill, as Amazon calls it. Further Reading on Smashing. Mag Link. Understanding Voice Interfaces Link. Just as mobile apps run on an OS and a device, three layers have to work together to enable voice interactions 6. The layers that enable voice interactionsvoice app Amazon Skills and Actions for Google artificial intelligence platform Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana device Echo, Home, smartphones, computers. Each layer uses the one below and supports the one above it. The voice interface lies in the upper two layers, both of which reside in the cloud, not on the device itself. Lets peek under the hood to see how these layers work together, using the Alexa Jeopardy Skill as an example. The layers that enable voice interactions. View large version. Voice driven devices such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home are constantly listening, waiting for a wake word Alexa or OK, Google to jump into action. Once activated, the device sends the audio that follows to the AI platform in the cloud play Jeopardy. The platform uses a combination of automatic speech recognition. ASR and natural language understanding. NLU to decipher the users intent to start a trivia game and send it to the supporting app Jeopardy J6 Skill on Alexa. The app processes the request and responds through text and a visual if applicable. The platform converts the text to speech and plays it through the device Welcome to Jeopardy J6. Here are todays clues. All this in matter of seconds. Building Voice Experiences Link. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg took on a personal challenge to build a simple AI1. He did, called it Jarvis and gave it the voice of Morgan Freeman. Mark Zuckerberg introduces Morgan Freeman to the AI that uses his voice. Image Mark Zuckerberg. The rest of us who dont have the ability or resources to do the same can get away with building voice apps that run on complex AI platforms that have already been built. This frees us to only have to worry about the design and development of the voice app, that too with a simplified development process. Amazon. 15 and Google. Their investment in simplifying app development is paying off, with thousands of new voice apps being launched every month. The growth in voice apps brings back memories of the 9. Breakdown of Alexa Skills by category as of May 2. View large version. In a crowded voice marketplace, good design is what will differentiate your voice app from the hundreds of other similar apps. Designing Voice Experiences Link. Designing a good voice user experience is a five step process that should take place before starting development. Though jumping straight into development might be tempting, the time spent getting the design right is time well spent. The steps in designing voice experiences View large version. We will discuss and apply each step to design a voice app, which could easily be developed using one of many Skill templates for Alexa. Discover Link. The design journey begins with the question, How will this voice app provide value to my users This question applies whether you are developing a standalone voice app like our example or whether your voice app is just one of many touchpoints for your customers. Take into consideration why and where people use voice apps. People use voice interfaces because of the benefits of hands free interaction, the speed of interaction and the ease of use, primarily using it at home or in the car, as shown in Mary Meekers 2. Internet Trends Report. Top reasons to use voice interfaces callouts by author Source KPCB2. Charizard Vs Articuno Video Download. View large version. The key is to find consistent user needs that are easier or more convenient through a voice app rather than a phone or a computer. Some examples include banks providing account information or a moviegoer finding new movies playing nearby. If you have competitors who already have voice apps, take into consideration what they are doing and the reviews and feedback their apps have received in the app marketplace such as Amazons Alexa Skill Store. The aim is not to blindly imitate, but to be aware of the capabilities bar that has been set, as well as user expectations. At the time of writing this, there were over 1,5. Alexa Skills, making it the most crowded Skill categories on Amazon. However, there wasnt a single trivia skill catering to the area of user experience. To illustrate the voice design process, we will create a UX design skill, for our readers to test their knowledge or maybe even to learn something new. Define Link. During this step, we will define the personality of our app and the capabilities it will have. Personality Link. When designing voice interfaces, we dont have access to many of the visual elements we use in web and mobile interfaces to show a personality. The personality has to come through the voice and tone of verbal interactions. And unlike Zuckerberg, who hears Freemans soothing voice, we are constrained to hearing the default voice of the device. That makes tone and wording crucial in conveying the personality we want to convey. The good news is that most of the groundwork in this area should have already been completed and documented in a corporate brand guide or website style guide hint look for the tone of voice section. Leverage those guidelines for your voice app, as well to maintain a consistent personality across channels and touchpoints. When I think of personality and tone, the Virgin Group immediately comes to mind. They clearly define who they are and how they convey that to users. For Virgin America, the ideal tone is hip, easygoing, informal, playful and tongue in cheek, and it comes across clearly in all their communication. Virgin Americas brand personality Source Virgin America. If youve ever asked Alexa to sing or tried any of the numerous Alexa Easter Eggs. Curious, I reached out to the team responsible for her personality, and heres what they had to say When architecting Alexas voice, we tried to give her a personality that reflects the attributes we value most at Amazon. We wanted her to feel helpful, humble and smart, while still maintaining a sense of fun. This is an ongoing process, and we expect the voice of Alexa will evolve as more developers focus on making her smarter. Personality can also be reflected in the apps name, icon and description that are displayed to users in the app directory listing, as well as in the name used to invoke the app the invocation name. So, make sure it shines through while publishing your app.