GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers
The latest smart audio report from NPR and Edison Research estimates that there are now nearly 120 million smart speakers in U.S. homes, representing 78 percent year-over-year growth. However, the survey also found that nearly 70 percent of survey respondents were “not at all likely” to buy another device.
According to a recent survey published by Voicebot.ai, one in four Americans own a smart speaker and that number continues to grow; smart speaker ownership increased by 40 percent in 2018 alone.
Just over half (53 percent) of owners use their smart speakers daily or multiple times a day. Curiously, 16 percent of the sample said they “never” use them. These are likely to have been gifts. Mine was.
Like the start of any relationship, our cyberdating experience started slow until we gradually got to know each other better . She had to learn my voice commands and I had to learn what she could and could not do. It also turns out that someone gave me a smart plug before I even knew what I was supposed to do with it. I plugged it in. Then, nothing.
Once I realized it was a way to activate lights or other electrical things by asking Alexa, I thought I’d give it a try. I must admit, though, I was getting nervous about how quickly things were moving with our relationship particularly since, even though I hardly know her, I invited her into my bedroom. Much to my surprise, she did not mind. In fact, she encouraged me to ask her more questions.
After about a month of using it to periodically listen to music or turn on and off by bedside lamp, there were ominous signs that our gig was going south:
- Every now then and it became disconnected to my WiFi and the App on my phone was cumbersome and time consuming to navigate. A simple on-off button would have been easier.
- I started reading about how speakers listen to our every word and sell the data to someone else without my approval. I thought we were going to keep things to ourselves before we introduced each other to our parents.
3. People like me are still trying to understand the full potential of smart speakers, and their expectations, interactions and boundaries are evolving. One survey uncovered six key tensions:
4.People are buying A LOT of smart speakers, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t nervous about eavesdropping. Curiosity about what smart speakers can do for people and their homes is being weighed against privacy concerns.
5.Talking to a machine feels futuristic, but the auditory interface can stir up feelings of nostalgia. An interactive voice assistant feels beamed from the future, but a speaker can feel like radio.
6. Smart speakers can help accomplish tasks, but they can also feel like toys. A person’s relationship to the device changes depending on whether they view it as a tool that completes tasks, or a content delivery mechanism that provides fun diversions.
7. People want a voice assistant to be friendly, but not too friendly. While it’s possible to humanize voice assistants by adding accents or emotions, people don’t want the devices to have an unprompted or imposing presence.
9. The experience reinforced my thought that putting smart speakers in the medical exam room would have lots of problems.
10. Like entrepreneurship, it was just better to pull the plugs, learn from my mistakes, and move on. No alimony. No child support. Not having to ghost Alexa on social media or avoid her at the Starbucks.
11. Maybe some day, like a bunch of techie nonsickcare entrepreneurs hope, Alexa will be a personalized patient clinical decision support tool or help with chronic disease management. It won’t help much, however, if your home dialysis machine loses it’s WiFi connection or your dog eats the smart plug.
12. There is a lot to be said for digital detox and solitude.
Now I am enjoying the disconnection, just using my expensive Sonos system that has much better sound anyway, just turning on the damn light myself and just looking up on the Internet who won the latest college football playoff game, which I really didn’t care that much about anyway. She just didn’t solve my problem and add enough value compared to the competition enough to make me switch from what I was doing before she entered my life.
Are you listening digital health, digital therapeutics and the internet of medical things? Alexa isn’t any more.
and Co-editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship
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