The document discusses the future of voice interfaces and virtual personal assistants. It outlines several major platforms including Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and Alexa. Alexa in particular is positioned as the most open platform and can be integrated into various devices through the Alexa Skills Kit and Alexa Voice Service. While voice interfaces are not meant to replace all physical inputs, they are well-suited for tasks like controlling smart home devices or ordering food through natural language commands. Developers are encouraged to rethink interface design for voice.

1. VOICE INTERFACES
SW MOBILE - MARCH 2016

2. SAM MACHIN
DEVELOPER ADVOCATE
SAM.MACHIN@NEXMO.COM
@SAMMACHIN

3. THE FUTURE OF UI

4. AS SOFTWARE BECOMES MORE AND
MORE PART OF OUR DAILY LIVES SO
THE INTERFACES NEED TO
SEAMLESSLY INTEGRATE

5. VOICE WILL NOT REPLACE PHYSICAL INPUTS
▸ Voice is not a replacement for keyboards and mice
▸ You won’t be writing your CV with voice anytime soon
▸ However the use cases like ordering a pizza or controlling
lights are ideally suited to voice.

6. FORGET EVERYTHING YOU
KNOW ABOUT INTERFACES

7. DON’T REPLACE MENUS BUTTONS AND FORMS WITH VOICE
▸ Voice interfaces need to be re-thought from the initial use
case
▸ Right now the base model is that of an assistant instead of
a form.
▸ Most of the engines use natural language parsing so a
user can phrase a command many ways

8. PLATFORMS

9. SIRI
▸ Launched Oct 2011
▸ iOS Only
▸ Still a closed platform
▸ Main use is controlling iPhone functions
▸ Only integrations are via Home Kit

10. GOOGLE NOW (OK GOOGLE)
▸ Launched July 2012
▸ Android, iOS and Chrome
▸ “Personalised Search”
▸ Now On Tap can interact with the phones current screen,
Apps can also create their own cards

11. CORTANA
▸ Launched April 2014
▸ Windows, Xbox, Android*, iOS* - *US Only
▸ PA for Microsoft Systems and Services
▸ Limited ‘Partner’ 3rd Party Integration

12. THESE
PLATFORMS ARE
ALL CENTERED
AROUND A
VIRTUAL PA

13. THIS IS WHERE WE ARE TODAY
WITH VOICE

14. ALEXA
▸ Amazons Platform
▸ Originally Just the Echo
▸ Built as a Home Assistant not part
of a phone.
▸ Probably the most ‘open’ platform
today

15. ALEXA VOICE SERVICE
▸ Amazon Developer API’s to add an Alexa Client to
‘anything’
▸ Record Speech
▸ Send to API
▸ Playback Response
▸ Still in ‘Developer Preview’

16. “THE $10 ECHO”
▸ Used a CHIP with the mic mod along with a basic button to
create a client for the Amazon Echo
▸ Python script watching GPIO for button press, then record
audio and post to Amazon AVS
▸ Playback response from amazon via speaker.
▸ Now Ported to The Raspberry Pi as AlexaPi

17. ALEXAWEB & CALL ALEXA
▸ Alexa running in a browser using WebRTC technology to
grab voice
▸ https://alexaweb.herokuapp.com
▸ Alexa on the end of a Phone
▸ Call 07520 615900

18. OTHER NOTABLE MENTIONS
▸ Jasper - Raspberry Pi Open Source Project to control
‘anything’
▸ Vaani - Mozilla Project for connected devices.
▸ Jarvis - Open Source PA project

19. ALEXA SKILLS KIT
▸ These are Alexa’s ‘Apps’
▸ Launched Aug 2015
▸ The store still has very limited functionality
▸ Orchestration of Multiple Apps on one Alexa account is
not quite right yet

20. ALEXA SKILLS KIT
▸ Skills are best built on Lambda but can be your own HTTPS
server
▸ Alexa passes the app a JSON object with commands
▸ App returns text to be spoken or audio file

21. SAM MACHIN
DEVELOPER ADVOCATE
SAM.MACHIN@NEXMO.COM
@SAMMACHIN