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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 tha

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.
    - projektir 8y ago
      > I'm not targeting anyone, just pointing out that the empathy line for Joe Average is much lower than the billionaire level. Most engineers are not billionaires. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark. It's really not beneficial to lump up these groups together like this. > Perhaps "too wealthy to empathize naturally" would be a better way to say it but I wasn't expecting this level of pedantry. "Too wealthy to empathize well" is a statement that deserves pedantry. It implies that wealth just makes people incapacitated, but the reality is much more complicated and distinguishing levels or sources of of wealth, something that you are not doing here by lumping engineers and billionaires in the same bucket, is very important here. If "too wealthy to empathize well" was a realistic statement, the average poor person in the US would have very little empathy because they're technically more wealthy than the majority of the world population, but that is an utterly ridiculous statement to make. > 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. Slack seems to be more popular than the average IRC client, so I am not even sure if this statement makes sense. If anything, resource hogging seems to be mostly an engineering concern, while for the average person, it's much more important that the UX experience is good, which Slack offers and old IRC doesn't, so all these people who you say don't have enough RAM seem to go to Discord and Slack while IRC remains too difficult to use. Which isn't to say that engineers shouldn't push for better resource utilization, it is after all kind of our job, but it's often an uphill battle against those very users with low RAM.
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.

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.
  - projektir 8y ago
    > I'm not targeting anyone, just pointing out that the empathy line for Joe Average is much lower than the billionaire level. Most engineers are not billionaires. Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark. It's really not beneficial to lump up these groups together like this. > Perhaps "too wealthy to empathize naturally" would be a better way to say it but I wasn't expecting this level of pedantry. "Too wealthy to empathize well" is a statement that deserves pedantry. It implies that wealth just makes people incapacitated, but the reality is much more complicated and distinguishing levels or sources of of wealth, something that you are not doing here by lumping engineers and billionaires in the same bucket, is very important here. If "too wealthy to empathize well" was a realistic statement, the average poor person in the US would have very little empathy because they're technically more wealthy than the majority of the world population, but that is an utterly ridiculous statement to make. > 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. Slack seems to be more popular than the average IRC client, so I am not even sure if this statement makes sense. If anything, resource hogging seems to be mostly an engineering concern, while for the average person, it's much more important that the UX experience is good, which Slack offers and old IRC doesn't, so all these people who you say don't have enough RAM seem to go to Discord and Slack while IRC remains too difficult to use. Which isn't to say that engineers shouldn't push for better resource utilization, it is after all kind of our job, but it's often an uphill battle against those very users with low RAM.

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.