Voice Recognition to Doom Your Remote
By: Richard Meyers
Tags: Voice Recognition, VR, Remote Control, Voice Command

The remote control for my cable box has 34 buttons, each with one discrete function. But wait. I have two more remotes; one for the actual television and another for my DVD player. Each of those remotes has a couple dozen more buttons, each with one discrete function. Of course I know that there are “universal remotes” on the market, designed to streamline television control, but I never bought one because I don’t want to expand to four different remotes.

Ahhhh!!! Which one is the right one?

On that note, I recently observed my son as he pressed the one and only blue button on our cable remote, moved the remote toward his mouth and said, “NBA Finals.” Sure enough, the channel changed and we were instantly watching basketball.

I wondered what would have happened if he had said, “Warriors versus Cleveland?” I had to know, so I changed the channel and then tried it. Sure enough — back to the NBA Finals. What if he said, “Warriors game”? Sure enough, it worked again. And “Cleveland basketball”? Yep, that worked too; four different commands, all netting the same result.

I was amazed. This informal experiment illustrates that the voice recognition software embedded in our cable provider’s system (Comcast) is “smart” enough to get us where we want to be with at least four different commands — very slick.

It made me think about those 34 buttons on the remote. Do we really need all 34 buttons? And for that matter, do I really need 27 buttons on my microwave oven? ….and 32 more on the dashboard of my car?

Typical auto dashboard

I turned to ASME.org, where Alan S. Brown points out,

“Voice recognition, its proponents argue, has the potential to change what we expect from the everyday products. As those products grow smarter and more capable, voice promises to simplify how we communicate with smart cars, smart homes, smart offices, and smart factories. Instead of mastering one new app after another, voice could make it simpler to command them all.” (“Talk to Me,” ASME.org, November, 2016.)

Brown went on to quote Henry Lieberman, a pioneer of human-computer interaction at MIT’s Media Lab,

“Language will become a means — not to help users understand a product more easily, but to have the product understand its users.”

As manufacturers continue to embed smarter voice recognition in their products, the devices will become better at responding to user requests and the dozens of buttons on remotes and dashboards will become obsolete.

Posting on ZDNet.com, Steve Ranger examines this concept in his review of Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick. Ranger notes that,

“The Alexa remote control is the most interesting new feature of the Fire TV Stick, allowing you to control the streaming device using voice commands.The Fire version of the Alexa service is launched by holding down the microphone button on the remote control and making a request.” (“Amazon Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote review: Smarten up your old TV,” ZDNet.com, May 10, 2017.)

So many options

Ranger describes how easy it is to order food or to find sci-fi movies using strictly voice command. He points out that addressing Alexa by name before making his request is no longer necessary, but doing so does not trigger any unwanted side effects that he anticipated may occur.

On the down side, Ranger points out that it is still easier to use the remote to scroll through program listings, that it doesn’t work across all apps, and that it didn’t always understand what he was trying to say. In the final analysis, he found extensive improvements, but acknowledges that the technology still has a way to go.

For manufacturers and business leaders, this opportunity foreshadows some significant shifts in how businesses will apply this evolving technology and use it to improve users’ experiences. There are many opportunities for forward thinking business leaders to expand their market penetration with high quality voice enhanced products.

I am curious — which of your devices would you like to see improved through better voice recognition?