That’s why UI designers will win the fight with the voice user interface!

From time to time, I hear new crazy ideas about how the voice user interfaces will make people happy. But that’s one side of trues, and I propose a few things why I think it’ll not happen. Or at least it will not happen as we imagined.

People need to see something when they make a choice or a decision.

The wise proverb says “ “It is better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.” We, humans, can’t imagine and keep in mind everything. So, if we need to perceive some information guess what? Yes, we need designers to make this information good-looking.

It’s nicer to click 10 times than say “Yes” 10 times.

I mean, if I see a button, I would prefer to click than to talk like a parrot. Seriously, sit down and try to say 10 times loudly “Yes”, “No”, “Back”, “Reload” with a 5 seconds pause. How do you feel?

Or you can’t do it because you are in the office right now? ( or in cafe/bus/street/gym, etc..)

Exactly, this is another important thing:

We are not always in the situations when we can talk to the device.

Life is an unpredictable thing. You can’t be 100% sure that you will be allowed to talk to your device in all the situations in your life, especially if there are other people around. If everybody starts to speak with his device as well, how it would it look like?

One of my favorites. Filters. Just open Instagram and try to edit your photo. How could it look like? Let’s imagine. “Next! Next. Next….next. This. Brighter. Brighter. Back. Add contrast.More.More.Shit, there is some guy on the back. Ok, let’s choose another photo. Restore default!” Do you know what’s funny? 25 words to choose a photo and try to correct 2 parameters. But on Instagram, you do a lot of clicks to make your photo looks like you imagined. Would you switch to the voice-controlled Instagram app? No? Of course, because:

The routine job that needs a lot of repetitive actions would be simpler if you use sliders and buttons!

And now let me ask you, please. How often do you use shortcuts and hotkeys in all the apps you use in everyday life? Do you remember all of them? Have you had situations when the same shortcut combination worked differently in different applications? What do I mean? I mean that…

…nobody can keep in mind all the commands to control all the devices. Nobody! Except the Chuck Norris of course.

And the last example for today. When you go to the city center and shout “Hey, you!” how many people take a look at you? The same with the devices: there is no multitask mode. And before devices start to read our thoughts, there is no guarantee that if you say “Stop!” you will stop exactly what you expected to stop.

P.S. This article is just an attempt to get out of the box and think broad-mindedly. If you have good examples where people use voice-controlled interfaces — you can type them in the comments below. I suspect this is the main reason why the Medium designer placed them under the articles :)

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