Design:
This Voice User Interface (VUI) prototype was designed to map out several tasks that current voice assistants are not able to perform or don’t perform as well as I would like them to:
- Book an appointment with your doctor
- Order coffee from the nearest Starbucks
- Check wait time and book a reservation at a restaurant
- Find the best bakery within 10 miles
- Check flight status
I came up with these 5 tasks after thinking back on several activities throughout my week while also considering what my impression of a good personal assistant would be able to do.
I personally use Siri most frequently compared to other voice assistants (Alexa, Google Assistant, etc.) and generally prefer Siri’s responses so I decided to prototype as if I were writing Siri’s responses to the tasks.
Prototype:
Keeping possible errors in mind, I came up with several general scenarios for each task along with the respective flow charts to visualize how the system would process information and arrive at different end conclusions.
In task 1, book an appointment with your doctor, the user has to have a primary care provider’s information added to their Medical ID card in their phone and the doctor will need to have the appointment booking feature set up in order for this task to be performed seamlessly.
In task 2, order coffee from the nearest Starbucks and get directions. After writing the dialogue I realized that I needed to account for a lack of payment connected to the device so I added it to the flow chart but since it would be an on screen interaction I didn’t add it to the prototype dialogue.
In task 3, check wait time and book a reservation at a restaurant, the feature again needs to be set up on the restaurant’s end as well and then would follow a similar route to the doctor’s appointment task.
In task 4, find the best bakery within 10 miles, I wanted to more seamlessly integrate checking the operational hours of the bakery compared to current responses by Siri. I tried asking current Siri the same question and it resulted in a much longer response than I would have liked which is why I added this as a task.
In task 5, check flight status, I thought it would be interesting if your device could not only track a flight but also understand to save a certain flight number (or other information) temporarily under one of your contacts so that you could periodically check up on it without needed to remember the flight number each time.
Analysis:
I really enjoyed doing this dialogue because it was fun to think about all the different check points a voice assistant would have to think through in order to make each of these tasks flow smoothly. That being said, that’s also what made the flow charts the most difficult part of this prototype. At first I would end up with almost a direct line to the end conclusion and then have to think back: “Well, what if they don’t have a way to pay set up? What if there’s no available appointment time?” etc..
I was able to test this dialogue over the phone with a few friends and I got a very positive response that most of these would be exciting features that would get them to use their voice assistants more frequently than they currently do. I did receive mixed feedback about how the dialogue should be more of a back and forth with the voice assistant replying with questions more frequently to make it feel more conversational. Some agreed it would feel more conversational but that it would also require extra feedback in cases where you don’t need more help with your request.
I think if I were to do this prototype again, I would like to draft more scenarios and really play out the possibilities of scenarios and account for all possible errors.
Going forward, I would like to create a new prototype dialogue that has more feedback from the voice assistant and test on a few friends so see which users prefer more.
