Voice Interaction Power Is Here to Stay

The Biggest UX Challenge

Imagine you are in a hurry, needing a fast response for a specific product or service, and have no time to aimlessly search in your internet browser. Then you remember the perfect website with an amazing user experience that is easily accessible by voicing your urgent needs.

Let´s say the website or app provides what we call (VUI ) a Voice User Interface just to make your wishes come true! Well, now this technology is a reality not just a figment of your imagination.

Voice interaction is revolutionizing UX way faster than mobile touchscreens did to web design. Soon it will impact every aspect of our user experiences.

Voice-enabled interfaces are challenging the long dominance of graphic user interfaces by creating interactions that feel more personalized, authentic, and easy to use.

What is voice interaction? It is the ability to speak to your devices and have them understand and act upon whatever you request of them.

Alexa is the famous reference with which we can all identify in order to better understand this concept of voice interaction. Alexa will be the new model of design in the near future, but there are many more voice interaction software choices like Cortana, Siri, and Google that continue growing as well.

Did you know that 41% of people who own a voice-activated speaker say it feels like talking to a friend or another person, per Google?

Listen to Exactly What Users Want.

A coherent interpretation of commands between visual and voice interfaces is a key concern for UX planners navigating this transition phase, especially for web applications. This may represent the biggest challenge that companies will have with the implementation in their development, design, and content departments. Developers rely on previous analysis of each brand or product and perform continuous testing.

Designers will have to predict users’ intentions at every stage of the conversation, and come up with the appropriate responses. The process must be initiated by voice because of a lack of a clear button-click signal with which to interpret a user's desired action.

This whole challenge will indeed be a fertile ground that offers opportunities for intuitive design to foster user engagement since there are innumerable ways to articulate the same basic intent via voice – which means UX designers must make sure they’re asking the right questions to extract the appropriate verbal responses from users in order to provide fast and efficient responses.

Commands like, “Give me updates from this site”, “Subscribe me to this blog”, or “Find me this product” can become the best assistant words for the user and the smartest way for designers to fill the gap.

Personalized VUI (Voice User Interfaces)

Think about this, VUI provides an incredible opportunity for designing experiences and for content creation by exploring brand customization through voice. Each brand could have its own voice as an extension of its corporate culture. Gender, age, inflection, tone, accent, cadence, and rhythm are all vocal elements that can be used by UX designers looking to create a particular customer experience with their brand.

A clever strategy would be using a friendly, soothing, and engaging voice that can represent your brand interests.

Consider that voice commerce is predicted to reach $40 billion by 2022, according to OC&C Strategy Consultants and 3. 5% of consumers use voice shopping, but that number could reach 50% by 2022, per MoffettNathanson.

In this year alone, let’s take into account the trends and developments in voice commands and voice AI that will grow in the near future.

1- Chatbots improved: relevant in various business functions like marketing and customer support, have been ameliorated by adding digital assistants that can respond to a visitor’s verbal requests in a natural language.

2- Voice-Controlled Wearables: The trend points to the creation of earbuds, finger rings, and eyeglasses as the online retailer aims to bring its technology into people's everyday lives.

3- Personalization: as natural linguistic programming (NLP) advances, the voice assistants' experiences would be more customizable. Smart devices will learn different users’ preferences and provide personalized information in an individualized manner.

4-  Workplace Assistants: are basically voice work assistants that can manage email services, handle scheduling across the workplace, and provide crucial business data on a regular basis at work.

5- Increased Voice Searchers: In a multitasking world, hands-free technology solutions have become vital!

No doubt VUI is a huge challenge and also the obvious next step to take.

According to statistics, by the end of 2020 50% of all searches will be voice searches. Technological advances never stop and the reality is that (AI) Artificial intelligence and speech-based services functionality will increase even more. People and businesses are adopting these technologies, and as they do, more advanced applications will appear.

Voice technology is already disrupting many industries, and companies are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, but they need to understand not only the potential it presents but also the technical challenges it brings for a team in a company.

Want to know more? Our team at Pixel 506 can help!