Voice interfaces have been around for many years with little traction. With Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple making significant investments in their virtual assistants, voice will be and is an integral part of the digital landscape. There is a convergence of approaches to voice interface design and there is no better time than now to learn about designing and developing for voice. During this session, entitled “Let’s Talk about Voice”, we’ll talk all things voice, interact with voice assistants, and look at the landscape of tools used in developing voice assistants. We’ll cover good voice design approaches and gain insight into the differences between software development and voice interface development. We’ll talk about voice in the home and in the workplace and how skills are monetized. And because bots now take advantage of natural language understanding, we’ll cover bots, too! This talk is geared towards a wide audience and is low on high-tech. If you are interested in developing skills for Alexa or Cortana, check out my other presentations: https://www.rickwargo.com/content/. Interested in code? Check out my Github account: https://github.com/rickwargo. Follow me for tips on twitter @rickwargo.

1. Let’s Talk about Voice
Rick Wargo
TPNG
July 19, 2017

2. Rick Wargo
Director, Technology and Architecture
InfoMC, Inc.
Published Three Alexa Skills
Many Private Alexa and Cortana Skills
Five Previous Voice Talks
Original Alexa Champion (27 total)

3. Some of My Favorite Places for a Voice Assistant

4. Intercom System (Drop In/Call)

5. Why Should You be Interested?

6. https://www.slideshare.net/firstmarkcap/amazons-echo-the-present-and-future-of-alexa-donn-morrill-amazon-firstmarks-hardwired-nyc
Echo is Everywhere

7. There Are Other Assistants

8. Reach
❖ In 2017, 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated assistant device at least
once a month. That’s a jump of 128.9% over last year (eMarketer)
❖ Amazon’s Echo speaker will have 70.6% of users in 2017, with Google Home at
23.8% of the market (eMarketer)
❖ The number of users of virtual assistants in the U.S. will grow 23.1% in 2017
(eMarketer)
❖ 60.5 million Americans will use Siri, Cortana or another virtual assistant at least
once a month in 2017 (eMarketer)
❖ 140 million Cortana reach

9. Predictions
❖ “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020” according to comscore
❖ “About 30% of searches will be done without a screen by 2020.” via Mediapos
❖ “We estimate there will be 21.4 million smart speakers in the US by 2020”
according to Activate
❖ “By 2019, the voice recognition market will be a $601 million industry”, according
to a report from Technavio via Skyword
❖ “This year (2017), 25 million devices will be shipped, bringing the total number of
voice-first devices to 33 million in circulation.” based on a new study
by VoiceLabs via Mediapost

10. ❖ Smart Home Hubs - Samsung, Wink, Insteon
❖ Lighting - Philips, LIFX, Cree, GE, hubs
❖ Switches, Dimmers, and Outlets - WeMo, Lutron, hubs
❖ Locks - August, Scout, Ring
❖ Heating and Cooling - Nest, Honeywell, Ecobee
❖ Automotive - Automatic, Garage
Integrated Home Automation

11. If This Then That (IFTTT)
❖Helps Alexa connection to other products and services
that don’t yet have official Alexa integrations.
❖There are IFTTT "recipes" for Logitech Harmony Home
Control, Honeywell Total Connect Comfort
thermostats, Xfinity set-top boxes, HP printers, and
much, much more.

12. Use Cases in the Office
❖ Wherever Your Hands are Occupied
✦ Surgery
✦ Dentist
❖ Access to Internal Content
❖ Others…

13. Security
❖Are these devices spying on us?
✦Only transmits data to Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Apple after the wake word
✦Ability to delete information
✦“Accidental” triggers
❖Retention
✦Stored on server indefinitely - Cortana gives most control, Apple anonymizes, keeps up to 2 years
✦Alexa cards are available in app, Cortana short-lived
❖Trust third-party developers
❖Relatively new

15. How Do I Get Started Building a Skill?
Tools
❖api.ai
❖voicelabs.co
❖dashbot.io
❖PullString
❖Conversable
API’s
❖Alexa Skills Kit (June 2015)
✦AWS Promotional Credits ($100/month)
✦Monthly Giveaways, Alexa Fund ($100M)
✦15,000+ Skills
❖Actions on Google SDK (December 2016)
✦Win a trip to Google I/O 2018
❖Cortana Skills Kit (May 2017)
✦67 Skills

16. Designing for Voice
❖ The most important aspect of building a skill
❖ Imagine your voice interaction
❖ Practice and refine it
❖ Get a lot of input from others
❖ Get ready to build it

17. Skill Design Elements

18. Twitter API
User
Voice Request Audio Stream
Code-Camp-Tweets
Skill
Lambda
JSON Request
Node.js
JSON Response
(SSML+Card)
Response (Audio)
Response (Text/Graphics)
Audio Response
App/Web
JSON Response
(statuses)
GET search/tweets
User Interaction Flow

19. Microsoft Build-a-Bot
Cortana
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bot-framework/overview-how-bot-framework-works

20. Monetization
❖ Advertising
❖ Somewhat prohibitive - only streaming music/radio or flash briefing skills
✦ Voice Labs
✦ Speech Snippets (5-15 second advertisement)
❖ Premier Content
❖ Supplement Service
❖ Amazon Direct Payment Rewards

21. Contact Me
❖ https://www.rickwargo.com/
❖ https://github.com/rickwargo
❖ https://linkedin.com/in/rickwargo
❖ contact@epicminds.com
❖ @rickwargo