The ideal mobile computer interface

jacquesmattheij.com

2 points·jacquesm··4 comments

We have had almost speech interfaces on phones for a little while, though the phone doesn't really talk to you.

If you hold down the search button on an android phone and then say "Call Mom" it works reasonably well. It also does searches reasonably well but this interface isn't very natural for me. I actually really dislike talking to inanimate objects and on the off chance that I am going to have to repeat myself multiple times and feel like I am a fool talking to plastic in my hands I am even less likely to do so.

So speech interfaces need to reach the point where they are basically errorless in recognizing what people have said (which seems like an insanely hard concept) and the public needs to reach the point where talking to computers is normal.

I remember my old Ericsson T20 had that back in 2000. Nobody uses it, the problem isn't the stuff that's going in and the processing, it's that there's no good feedback/menu system. We are used to the autocomplete function of search when using a keyboard and it is superior, and there's no good such alternative for speech.

Wasn't 'OnStar' supposed to be exactly this service for your car? I guess it morphed into a 'please call the authorities' or 'please unlock my vehicle' service instead.

In the UK we already have something like this, it's called 118118 and you can ring them up and ask them almost anything and they'll give you an answer.

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