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The people designing this are too wealthy to emphasize. People want to know what those Oreos will cost before buying. If they took panes to address the price an

The people designing this are too wealthy to emphasize. People want to know what those Oreos will cost before buying. If they took panes to address the price anxiety there's no reason people won't start ordering from it. People were worried about freshness with produce delivery. Amazon tackled it head on by literally calling the service "Fresh". They're going to have to so something drastic here too.

gkoberger 8y ago
I don't think that's true. Bezos isn't sitting there designing Alexa from his gold-plated desk. Rather, I think Amazon realized they're a huge tech company that missed the lucrative phone game (despite trying with Amazon Fire). They realized they could be first to market with home automation, so they jumped on it. But they're still an online store, so they obviously had to include "buying stuff" as one of the main features. Basically, my point is: I don't think their premise ever was "the best way to order stuff is via voice", but rather "we need to let people order stuff since we're Amazon, and we're doing the best we can with the medium".
- flukus 8y ago
  > I don't think that's true. Bezos isn't sitting there designing Alexa from his gold-plated desk. No but the people that are working on Alexa (the engineers) are probably too wealthy to empathize as well, a poorly paid one is probably earning more than at least 80% of the population. They might have financial pressures of their own, but they're unlikely to care if the the oreos cost $2 or $3 today. Software Developers, particularly in Silicon Valley are out of touch with most of the world. Edit - Just to demonstrate, how much RAM would you say the average desktop has? If you said anything over 4GB you might be out of touch with most people even in a field you know: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/ https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/
  - sigfubar 8y ago
    You're getting downvoted because truth hurts.
  - projektir 8y ago
    I'm an "engineer" but I am still concerned with the prices of things and dislike overpaying. It's not that uncommon for engineers of some product or other to not personally use it. And, generally, engineers don't design things, they just build them. I'm perplexed as to why your target is, specifically, engineers. Why not product managers? Designers? VPs? CEOs? They tend to be much closer to making actual decisions and, as well off as engineers are, CEOs are on a whole other level. > too wealthy to empathize as well This is not a thing. Wealth doesn't reduce someone's capacity for empathy. What wealth is likely to do is simply make the individual less acquainted with a certain range of situations, which is something a person can rectify if they wish. Many people don't, and are clueless, but that's another matter, and not limited to wealth. I don't think it's fair to say that, say, a person who's pushing accessibility at a company is unable to empathize because they're too well off. You're basically blaming people for not having worse lives. How dare they have more GB than most people. This is just crabs in a bucket syndrome. And Seattle is not in Silicon Valley.
    - flukus 8y ago
      > I'm an "engineer" but I am still concerned with the prices of things and dislike overpaying. So do I, but unless you're carrying around a spreadsheet with the historical prices of every item you will be over paying for some things. I'm much less sensitive to the daily fluctuations than many/most though because I don't have to watch where every cent is going. > I'm perplexed as to why your target is, specifically, engineers I'm not targeting anyone, just pointing out that the empathy line for Joe Average is much lower than the billionaire level. > What wealth is likely to do is simply make the individual less acquainted with a certain range of situations, which is something a person can rectify if they wish. Correct, any person can rectify it if they want to, but it would take a concerted effort and even then there are many things they would likely not understand correctly, like the physiological effects of poverty. "Not knowing what you don't know" is also something many from wealthy backgrounds would experience in this regard, making it harder for them to empathize. Perhaps "too wealthy to empathize naturally" would be a better way to say it but I wasn't expecting this level of pedantry. > You're basically blaming people for not having worse lives. How dare they have more GB than most people. I'm not blaming anyone for having more GB, I'm blaming them for not knowing what a typical amount is. As software developers would should have some idea what our hardware constraints are shouldn't we? Otherwise we end up with terrible glorified IRC clients using GB's of RAM that our users don't have.
- suls 8y ago
  Yeah something along these lines is my best guess as well. The fact that an online retailer actually has a physical device in the customers' home is actually a huge thing. Amazon takes away one competitive advantage from the offline retailers. Just hypothesizing now, but having a device in the customers home could also proof to be invaluable to reduce re-delivery rates in the future.
- usrusr 8y ago
  On the other hand, Amazon has this almost traditional infatuation with their one click patent. If one click is good, no click must be better. The idea of streamlining the buying front-end not only further than anybody asked for but also more than most people are comfortable with isn't new to Amazon. Also, the browser is where people compare prices much more than in any other buying interface. Blame it on the very high "UI bandwidth" of browsers, which voice lacks. A tiny fraction of users switching to an interface that allows makes bargain hunting hard and thus allows higher margins can be extremely valuable to the vendor.
- onion2k 8y ago
  I don't think their premise ever was "the best way to order stuff is via voice" Ordering by telephone was completely normal 30 years ago; voice was definitely not an impediment when there was a human on the other end of a phone line able to understand and resolve ambiguity. The only problem with voice UIs is cost. When a machine can replace the human operator voice will work perfectly well.
trynewideas 8y ago
"Alexa, order Tim Tams." > The TimTam Pulse Therapeutic Wearable System Wireless TENS Unit + Mobile App Muscle Stimulator for Chronic Athletic Pain Recovery costs $199. You asked me to confirm purchases if they cost more than $15. Are you sure you want to continue this order? "The biscuits! You stupid computer, I want chocolate biscuits!"
- hueving 8y ago
  "there are many results for 'chocolate biscuits'. Would you like more information?"
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wjp3 8y ago
    "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
oconnor663 8y ago
> The people designing this are too wealthy to emphasize. They didn't just think of the idea one afternoon and run with it. Development took years. I'm sure they had plenty of meetings about this problem.
- pavs 8y ago
  Many products took years of development time, only to come out as ill-thought out and dud. Development time period is not really a scale for the quality of a product. Some poorly thought out products that come into mind, Windows Vista, 8, IE, Android (earlier versions) - just to name a few.
  - jarfil 8y ago
    Windows Vista was just Windows 7 Beta (never should have been called anything else), and Windows 8 was actually a good OS with a single UX flaw. Early versions of Android were pretty much the same, just lacking in features. I think the same might be the case with Alexa, it's just in its public testing phase.
  - cthalupa 8y ago
    Much of the problems with Vista weren't actually Microsoft's fault. A huge portion of the performance and instability issues were due to poor driver support. Vista was a major jump forward from XP, and in many cases the drivers needed to be significantly updated to handle this - and a huge amount of work that needed to happen to handle this, simply didn't occur. Microsoft aggressively pushed for drivers to be updated, and a lot of manufacturer's just didn't listen. The other half of it was more than half a decade had occurred in between. Resource requirements went up for the OS - this isn't unexpected, and you can see the same between any 5 year jump in most every other OS. Trying to run Vista on a system specced for XP wasn't a great experience, especially when coupled with all of the driver issues. By the time 7 had come out, Vista was more than fine. The drivers had been updated, people were using machines with more RAM and faster processors. If they had just skipped Vista and released 7, we would have seen the exact same issues - people would still be buying machines with XP specs in mind, hardware manufacturers would have had a shit story on drivers, and we would be talking about how 7 should have been called 8 beta. I'm a *nix guy so I have plenty of personal bias against Microsoft for a wide variety of reasons and on a wide variety of subjects - but most of the hate for Vista never should have been directed at Microsoft. I've always had a Windows desktop for gaming, even though the vast majority of my time is spend using a Mac laptop or SSH'ed into Solaris or Linux servers, and I've run every version of Windows since 3.1 - Vista, itself, was fine. It was certainly no ME.
csydas 8y ago
I think it's more the classic case of get it out there first, we'll figure out how to make money off it later. It's a classic tech play, and certainly Alexa has made a huge impact in the US; Amazon is already in everyone's home, so for them it's just waiting to see how they can monetize it later on.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  I'd stop short of saying that Alexa is in everyone's home, among my friends and family I only know two people with any kind of voice assistant.
oh_hello 8y ago
I remember watching a demo of Viv, a new voice assistant from the original creators of Siri. I believe Samsung bought them. The demo was nothing but spending money without checking reviews or prices. The kicker was a command along the lines of "Viv, book me a nice hotel room in Palm Springs for Labor Day weekend." I'm relatively well off compared to the general population and I would never spend a fraction of the money this guy burned through in the demo so aimlessly.

gkoberger 8y ago

I don't think that's true. Bezos isn't sitting there designing Alexa from his gold-plated desk. Rather, I think Amazon realized they're a huge tech company that missed the lucrative phone game (despite trying with Amazon Fire). They realized they could be first to market with home automation, so they jumped on it. But they're still an online store, so they obviously had to include "buying stuff" as one of the main features. Basically, my point is: I don't think their premise ever was "the best way to order stuff is via voice", but rather "we need to let people order stuff since we're Amazon, and we're doing the best we can with the medium".

flukus 8y ago
> I don't think that's true. Bezos isn't sitting there designing Alexa from his gold-plated desk. No but the people that are working on Alexa (the engineers) are probably too wealthy to empathize as well, a poorly paid one is probably earning more than at least 80% of the population. They might have financial pressures of their own, but they're unlikely to care if the the oreos cost $2 or $3 today. Software Developers, particularly in Silicon Valley are out of touch with most of the world. Edit - Just to demonstrate, how much RAM would you say the average desktop has? If you said anything over 4GB you might be out of touch with most people even in a field you know: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/ https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/
- sigfubar 8y ago
  You're getting downvoted because truth hurts.
- projektir 8y ago
  I'm an "engineer" but I am still concerned with the prices of things and dislike overpaying. It's not that uncommon for engineers of some product or other to not personally use it. And, generally, engineers don't design things, they just build them. I'm perplexed as to why your target is, specifically, engineers. Why not product managers? Designers? VPs? CEOs? They tend to be much closer to making actual decisions and, as well off as engineers are, CEOs are on a whole other level. > too wealthy to empathize as well This is not a thing. Wealth doesn't reduce someone's capacity for empathy. What wealth is likely to do is simply make the individual less acquainted with a certain range of situations, which is something a person can rectify if they wish. Many people don't, and are clueless, but that's another matter, and not limited to wealth. I don't think it's fair to say that, say, a person who's pushing accessibility at a company is unable to empathize because they're too well off. You're basically blaming people for not having worse lives. How dare they have more GB than most people. This is just crabs in a bucket syndrome. And Seattle is not in Silicon Valley.
  - flukus 8y ago
    > I'm an "engineer" but I am still concerned with the prices of things and dislike overpaying. So do I, but unless you're carrying around a spreadsheet with the historical prices of every item you will be over paying for some things. I'm much less sensitive to the daily fluctuations than many/most though because I don't have to watch where every cent is going. > I'm perplexed as to why your target is, specifically, engineers I'm not targeting anyone, just pointing out that the empathy line for Joe Average is much lower than the billionaire level. > What wealth is likely to do is simply make the individual less acquainted with a certain range of situations, which is something a person can rectify if they wish. Correct, any person can rectify it if they want to, but it would take a concerted effort and even then there are many things they would likely not understand correctly, like the physiological effects of poverty. "Not knowing what you don't know" is also something many from wealthy backgrounds would experience in this regard, making it harder for them to empathize. Perhaps "too wealthy to empathize naturally" would be a better way to say it but I wasn't expecting this level of pedantry. > You're basically blaming people for not having worse lives. How dare they have more GB than most people. I'm not blaming anyone for having more GB, I'm blaming them for not knowing what a typical amount is. As software developers would should have some idea what our hardware constraints are shouldn't we? Otherwise we end up with terrible glorified IRC clients using GB's of RAM that our users don't have.
suls 8y ago
Yeah something along these lines is my best guess as well. The fact that an online retailer actually has a physical device in the customers' home is actually a huge thing. Amazon takes away one competitive advantage from the offline retailers. Just hypothesizing now, but having a device in the customers home could also proof to be invaluable to reduce re-delivery rates in the future.
usrusr 8y ago
On the other hand, Amazon has this almost traditional infatuation with their one click patent. If one click is good, no click must be better. The idea of streamlining the buying front-end not only further than anybody asked for but also more than most people are comfortable with isn't new to Amazon. Also, the browser is where people compare prices much more than in any other buying interface. Blame it on the very high "UI bandwidth" of browsers, which voice lacks. A tiny fraction of users switching to an interface that allows makes bargain hunting hard and thus allows higher margins can be extremely valuable to the vendor.
onion2k 8y ago
I don't think their premise ever was "the best way to order stuff is via voice" Ordering by telephone was completely normal 30 years ago; voice was definitely not an impediment when there was a human on the other end of a phone line able to understand and resolve ambiguity. The only problem with voice UIs is cost. When a machine can replace the human operator voice will work perfectly well.

trynewideas 8y ago

"Alexa, order Tim Tams." > The TimTam Pulse Therapeutic Wearable System Wireless TENS Unit + Mobile App Muscle Stimulator for Chronic Athletic Pain Recovery costs $199. You asked me to confirm purchases if they cost more than $15. Are you sure you want to continue this order? "The biscuits! You stupid computer, I want chocolate biscuits!"

hueving 8y ago
"there are many results for 'chocolate biscuits'. Would you like more information?"
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wjp3 8y ago
  "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."

oconnor663 8y ago

> The people designing this are too wealthy to emphasize. They didn't just think of the idea one afternoon and run with it. Development took years. I'm sure they had plenty of meetings about this problem.

pavs 8y ago
Many products took years of development time, only to come out as ill-thought out and dud. Development time period is not really a scale for the quality of a product. Some poorly thought out products that come into mind, Windows Vista, 8, IE, Android (earlier versions) - just to name a few.
- jarfil 8y ago
  Windows Vista was just Windows 7 Beta (never should have been called anything else), and Windows 8 was actually a good OS with a single UX flaw. Early versions of Android were pretty much the same, just lacking in features. I think the same might be the case with Alexa, it's just in its public testing phase.
- cthalupa 8y ago
  Much of the problems with Vista weren't actually Microsoft's fault. A huge portion of the performance and instability issues were due to poor driver support. Vista was a major jump forward from XP, and in many cases the drivers needed to be significantly updated to handle this - and a huge amount of work that needed to happen to handle this, simply didn't occur. Microsoft aggressively pushed for drivers to be updated, and a lot of manufacturer's just didn't listen. The other half of it was more than half a decade had occurred in between. Resource requirements went up for the OS - this isn't unexpected, and you can see the same between any 5 year jump in most every other OS. Trying to run Vista on a system specced for XP wasn't a great experience, especially when coupled with all of the driver issues. By the time 7 had come out, Vista was more than fine. The drivers had been updated, people were using machines with more RAM and faster processors. If they had just skipped Vista and released 7, we would have seen the exact same issues - people would still be buying machines with XP specs in mind, hardware manufacturers would have had a shit story on drivers, and we would be talking about how 7 should have been called 8 beta. I'm a *nix guy so I have plenty of personal bias against Microsoft for a wide variety of reasons and on a wide variety of subjects - but most of the hate for Vista never should have been directed at Microsoft. I've always had a Windows desktop for gaming, even though the vast majority of my time is spend using a Mac laptop or SSH'ed into Solaris or Linux servers, and I've run every version of Windows since 3.1 - Vista, itself, was fine. It was certainly no ME.

csydas 8y ago

I think it's more the classic case of get it out there first, we'll figure out how to make money off it later. It's a classic tech play, and certainly Alexa has made a huge impact in the US; Amazon is already in everyone's home, so for them it's just waiting to see how they can monetize it later on.

StudentStuff 8y ago
I'd stop short of saying that Alexa is in everyone's home, among my friends and family I only know two people with any kind of voice assistant.

oh_hello 8y ago

I remember watching a demo of Viv, a new voice assistant from the original creators of Siri. I believe Samsung bought them. The demo was nothing but spending money without checking reviews or prices. The kicker was a command along the lines of "Viv, book me a nice hotel room in Palm Springs for Labor Day weekend." I'm relatively well off compared to the general population and I would never spend a fraction of the money this guy burned through in the demo so aimlessly.