How do you build something that could potentially be used by a billion people? Something that your mom would use and give critical comments about? This was our challenge when we started working with some of India's largest online app players who serve more than 100 million users today and with ambitions and potential of reaching out to 10x more in the next few years. Starting with running on the field user research (https://www.slanglabs.in/blog/does-voice-augmented-experience-in-apps-help-emergent-users-a-field-research-report) to running live experiments inside the app we were able to prove that Voice in-app, when done right, indeed works, and people love it. Like 42% of people who did voice search at least once, did not go back to using typed search. If you did more than 5 voice searches, you are a convert and rarely go back to typed search. 10-15% higher conversion rates of people actually placing an order when they have tried voice at least once. In this talk, we will share our experience of adding Slang's multi-lingual Voice Assistant into some of India's most popular apps and the interesting results that were derived from it.

1. WHY CAN’T OUR
MOMS USE THE APPS
WE MAKE?
Kumar Rangarajan
Slang Labs

2. Making Voice work for the
Next Billion Users

3. Some context...

4. We are a VaaS company,
providing managed &
easily consumable
smart, multilingual Voice
Assistants for Mobile
and Web Apps

5. VaaS = Voice Assistant
as a Service

6. Working with some of
the largest startups
and enterprises in
India, as they try to
solve for the Next
Billion Users (NBU)

7. During our journey, we did
a lot of field level research
trying to understand what
interface challenges exist
for mobile app users

8. We were inspired by this
single question...

9. WHY CAN’T OUR
MOMS USE THE APPS
WE MAKE?

10. We wanted to understand
her digital experience and
also those of the Billions
of people she represents...
the NBU

11. Why is she scared of
doing things that most
of us can do so easily?

12. Turns out, lots of
research has already
happened in this field…

17. There is a certain way in
which these emergent
users evolve in their
digital journey...

18. Competency levels
Usertypes
Unexposed Novice
Rote
Learner Fluent Competent
Basic User
Navigator
Text
Inputter
Saver
Digital evolution of NBU users
monetary value / trust value
Account
Holder

19. We talked to people to
understand their concerns

20. App Navigation is painful
Discovery is broken with limited real
estate
Typing is a hurdle, and tedious. More so
in non-English languages
Literacy, esp English, is a big challenge
Learning curve is steep
Why
can’t our
moms
use the
apps we
build?

21. App Navigation is painful
Discovery is broken with limited real
estate
Typing is a hurdle, and tedious. More so
in non-English languages
Literacy, esp English, is a big challenge
Learning curve is steep
Why
can’t our
moms
use the
apps we
build?

22. App Navigation is painful
Discovery is broken with limited real
estate
Typing is a hurdle, and tedious. More
so in non-English languages
Literacy, esp English, is a big challenge
Learning curve is steep
Why
can’t our
moms
use the
apps we
build?

23. App Navigation is painful
Discovery is broken with limited real
estate
Typing is a hurdle, and tedious. More so
in non-English languages
Literacy, esp English, is a big challenge
Learning curve is steep
Why
can’t our
moms
use the
apps we
build?

24. App Navigation is painful
Discovery is broken with limited real
estate
Typing is a hurdle, and tedious. More so
in non-English languages
Literacy, esp English, is a big challenge
Learning curve is steep
Why
can’t our
moms
use the
apps we
build?

25. Let’s look at a few
examples of these
problems...

26. Ever been
frustrated
trying to
find
something
in your app?

27. Have you
watched
your mom
do the
most
simplest of
tasks?

28. The people here in
the audience might
not have experienced
any of the problems

29. Most of us evolved
from the desktop era
to the mobile era

30. But for the NBU users,
the start and the only
source of their digital
journey is via the
mobile phone...

31. The experience needs
to be simple enough
to get started, yet
powerful enough to
scale as they evolve

32. Customers added
our In-App Voice
Assistants to help
simplify the user
journey.

33. Everything was
now a single
click away

35. Our first Voice
Assistants worked
well, but not
always...

36. Some of the NBU
users continued to
struggle, even with
this experience

37. The way they used
the voice experience
was interesting...

38. They did not notice
the mic icon

39. We added a
palette of
multi-colored
icons apps
could choose

40. We also
added built-in
support for
showing
onboarding &
contextual
coachmarks

41. Some clicked and
put the phone to
their ears like
making a call

42. Some did not know
they were supposed
to talk after clicking
on the mic

43. Some were
reluctant to give
microphone
permission

44. We added
speaking out a
greeting with
animation, as
soon as the
user clicks on
the mic button

45. We added that
experience to
include the
permission
request too

46. We also added
a mute button
to help people
who wanted
more privacy

47. They tried to “long
press” the mic icon,
like what they are
used to in WhatsApp

48. The first thing they
say is “hello” and
broke the NLP
system

49. All these and more
enabled us to get
better traction with
end users using the
Assistant

50. 26% of users who did
Voice search, preferred
to use only that
Voice Only
Search users
Voice + typed Search users
But most preferred a
mix of both

51. Contextual coachmarks had a ~70% higher
conversion than showing coachmarks
only at the beginning
13% conversion when showing the
coachmark during onboarding
22% conversion when showing the
coachmark contextually

52. Even though we gave the option to choose between
multiple languages, most still preferred English

53. There were some real power users
who did more than 300 searches

54. We are hoping all our
moms (and dads) would
benefit from this and
not just ours :-)

55. bye
Thank
you