At its best, technology can enhance our domestic lives. But smart speakers driven by nascent AI voice control are not quite there yet when it comes to integrating seamlessly into our homes. As Apple prepares to launch the Apple HomePod, it’s a good time to think about how these products will look and behave in the future.
Looking at this year’s CES, it’s clear that one of the main challenges remains: to create products that solve real and relevant problems. A lot of new smart products are purely tech-driven and answer the question what can we do with this new technology, rather than addressing the real problems can we solve for the user. This approach risks creating solutions for problems that never existed, or are solutions that are simply not valuable enough to warrant adoption. At worst, they often over-complicate simple tasks. One voice assistant at CES turned the basic task of switching an oven on by turning a dial into a string of notifications and messages on your phone.
If completely integrated smart homes are the future, then all interactions between voice assistant and other devices need to be as smooth as possible. This could lead to major changes in the interface design of many other home appliances and devices. After all, if your voice assistant can control the oven, fridge, heating system, lights, and so on, then why do any of these things need interfaces or controls of their own?
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Part of the challenge is that current AI voice technology still relies on a ‘call-and-response’ way of communicating. We ask our smart speaker a simple question or give them a simple command. The conversation thread is very short, only allowing for simple follow up questions or easy tasks. The next challenge is to create more conversational interactions and a true understanding of natural language.
This is still a long way off. AI driven devices are in the very early stages of development: we trust them with non-critical tasks that make life a little more convenient, but don’t always expect them to deliver exactly what we want. If we are to adopt these devices for more complex, safety-critical tasks, like medication monitoring or more intimate psychological needs around relationships and self-esteem, designers need to tackle the issue of trust. This is already a barrier to adoption for many who simply don’t trust these sentient listening devices in their most private spaces. This often happens in the early stages of adoption of a new technology. As Douglas Adams once said, “Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet.”
While there’s much to admire about the sleek and friendly design of the Apple HomePod, it's interesting to note how the physical design of many smart speakers on the market is already starting to look and feel quite similar: smooth cylinders and rounded forms with soft features and fabric. Like the (smart) phone and smart TV, the category could be heading towards a homogenous design language. And this raises the question of whether the physical design of these products even matters.
As this is an emerging category and the products are primarily for intimate, domestic environments, the physical design will likely remain important for some time. Design can assist with early adoption by creating non-threatening, non-intrusive products that blend easily into the home. The design can signify functionality, guide usage, and sets expectations for the relationship we will have with these devices. Within a fairly short timeline we’ve already seen speakers turn from black boxes into more interior design-inspired products that differentiate more by their design than by sound quality. This is how Amazon, Apple, Google and others aim to attract consumers. Smart speakers will continue this development, being designed more and more from an interior design perspective – almost as art-objects - that can be used to express personal identity in the home.
From a more practical point of view, smart speakers have some crucial physical requirements that are essential for sound performance and quality, and business models of tech giants such as Apple depend on selling physical products over the counter and reap the benefits from having a presence in the homes of consumers. For these reasons, there will be continued demand for new and distinctive looking products from brands that consumers buy into and identity with.
But what about the future? It’s easy to imagine voice assistants incorporating visual feedback to make communication easier. This could either come through a smart watch, or a display or projector into the speaker. This functionality is important when your voice assistant is doing shopping and you need pictures of what you’re buying; choosing music via cover art; or making fine adjustments to lighting, temperature and volume, which are much more intuitive to do via visual or physical means than by voice.
We could also be headed for omnipresent and completely integrated devices, as seen in the movie Her, where we have natural conversations purely using voice. As devices become more proactive and our relationship with them deepens, we will want to build stronger and more human relationships with them. Home robotics with advanced integrated voice technology might well come into play to communicate a more mature AI personality and inspire trust. This is less about humanoid robots walking around our homes and more about intelligent machines that fit seamlessly into our lives. If CES is anything to go by, we’re still a long way off – but it’s interesting to see how some companies are already exploring more engaging interactions between humans and machines.
ELLI Q from Intuition Robotics assists older people as a companion in their home, offering advice and encouraging activity. The more playful and entertaining R by Baidu, a six-axis robot, responds to voice commands and expresses emotions through movement. These examples use abstracted anthropomorphic features, rather than trying to replicate a real face and body, and this approach will likely help build deeper, more trusting relationships as the technology advances. It will also help technology understand us better, especially when we communicate more information non-verbally – through our gestures, facial expressions and posture – than we do verbally.
While it’s easy to get carried away with technology of the future, we must remember that every reaction has a counter-reaction. Just like the re-emergence of vinyl and increased popularity of live music is in some ways a response to music streaming, the same could be true of the AIs we’re introducing into our homes. If voice assistants and speakers become a bit too smart, we could see a return to physical sliders, switches and dials, giving users a familiar and tangible interface that supports the AI voice experience. We’re only human, after all.
Carsten Eriksen is co-CEO of design agency Swift Creatives
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
