4 ms·

Okay, I knew I was stupid already, but if I was an assistant, and smart enough to know there was more than one London (which I've until recently not been), I'd

by dusted 6y ago

Okay, I knew I was stupid already, but if I was an assistant, and smart enough to know there was more than one London (which I've until recently not been), I'd have asked "Which one?" in case there was not enough context to make a guess. There are probably _A_LOT_ of people who have a lot more to do with the non-british London who'd be very sad indeed if The Machines (tm) suddenly decided that EVERY request about London MUST ALWAYS be about the British one.. Kinda like how I'm eternally sad when I get german results, just because my connection is from Germany, but I am Danish, sitting in Denmark and am usually NOT looking for the nearest biergarten (lies, I am, but we have none).

mcherm 6y ago
Asking for clarification is a GREAT response. I'd be happy if a human assistant OR Siri were to respond that way.
- koala_man 6y ago
  It sounds like a good idea until you realize how many interpretations any given question can have, and how many of them are extremely unlikely. "How far is Jupiter from the sun?" "Jupiter, Florida; or Jupiter the planet?" "How old is Donald Trump?" "There are 21 people with that name, do you mean ...?" "Call 911" "The emergency number or the English 90s boy band?"
Veen 6y ago
You're right that some people want to know the time in London, Ontario. But most people who ask the time in London don't. In the absence of context, the right thing is to give the time in the UK. If more context is given: "What time is it in London, Ontario," then obviously it should give the time in Ontario, and perhaps remember that this person is an exception to the rule.
onion2k 6y ago
There are probably _A_LOT_ of people who have a lot more to do with the non-british London who'd be very sad indeed if The Machines (tm) suddenly decided that EVERY request about London MUST ALWAYS be about the British one.. There will be a lot more people who are asking about the British London than people who are asking about their nearest London. Apple will be making far more people sad by defaulting to the local one. If Siri asked "Which London?" every time most people would get annoyed. What should happen from a UX perspective is that Siri should respond with "The time in London, UK, is..." which would inform the user that Siri is differentiating between different Londons, and that they need to specify a locality in order to narrow down the query to some other London if necessary. 99% of the time the user will get what they wanted first time, and the other 1% of the time the user will be informed that their query wasn't accurate enough.
- dusted 6y ago
  Selecting a default behaviour based on what "most people" will benefit from is great some cases, but mostly cases people will encounter only once. People who happen to fall beside the "most" category should not have to deal with that every single time. The right thing to do for Siri is to ask, maybe just once, which london you want to know the time for, if its not smart enough to infer it from something else it's learned about you. Assuming a person is physically closer to the non-british london, it's entirely likely that they travel there more often, and if the siri software has no other parameters tracked, then it's not unreasonable to assume that they're asking about that.
  - ArgyleSound 6y ago
    > Assuming a person is physically closer to the non-british london, it's entirely likely that they travel there more often It really isn’t. I can see this being the case for people that live within, say, 100 miles of London, ON - but why would they want to know the time there in that case?
  - sadfklsjlkjwt 6y ago
    I would guess that there are more people in North America who are interested in London than people in North America who are interested in London, Ontario. See what I did there? London (which is a major global city) doesn't need a qualifier anymore than New York does.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    Assuming a person is physically closer to the non-british london, it's entirely likely that they travel there more often... It's also reasonable to assume they're in the same timezone as 'their' London and wouldn't need to ask what time it is in the local one. That's another reason to default to one further away, which for most people would be Britain.
- spuz 6y ago
  > What should happen from a UX perspective is that Siri should respond with "The time in London, UK, is..." This is exactly what Google assistant does. You can follow your question up with "what about London, Canada" and it will say "The time in London, ON, Canada is...". There are two things a good assistant will do: 1. save you time by making reasonable assumptions and 2. inform you which assumptions it has made.
darkwater 6y ago
TBH I think there are only two cases where you would answer with London, Ontario time: - you are from London, Ontario and are traveling in another TZ - you are in London, UK In all the other cases, without no further context, Londo UK should be used because it's one of the "capitals of the world"
- smikhanov 6y ago
  Your #2 is not good. I live in London, UK and when asking "What's the time in London", I mean London, UK. You may ask why do I need to specify London at all? Here's one of the possible scenarios, sounding very normal as human communication goes: (I'm in London wanting to phone my relatives in Moscow, which is several time zones away. I don't know the current time in either Moscow or London, and I don't know what's the time difference between the two as not all countries observe DST) Me: "Hey Siri, what's the time in Moscow?" Siri: "It's 10:35PM in Moscow, Russia" Me (thinking about whether I'll finish speaking in time for dinner): "Hey Siri, what's the time in London?" Siri: "It's 8:35PM in London, UK" Asking "What's the time?" instead of "What's the time in London?" sounds very unnatural here.
  - darkwater 6y ago
    Fair enough, although I do see it as a not so common case. But maybe it is more common than people wanting to know the time in London, Canada while being in London, UK.
Someone 6y ago
That would get annoying very soon. If you look hard enough, almost any question is ambiguous. I think the best thing to do is to pick one interpretation, answer that, but make it clear which London you picked (“the time in London, England is 12:34”), and then, handle “no, the one in…” correctly. Falling back to “which one do you mean?” Should be the exception, as a voice assistent that can’t make that initial guess right most of the time isn’t worth using.
- ninkendo 6y ago
  > I think the best thing to do is to pick one interpretation, answer that, but make it clear which London you picked That’s actually the exact interaction you get with Siri today (I just checked): U: What time is it in London? S: It’s 7:09 AM in London, Canada U: No, London UK S: It’s 12:09 PM in London, England The only problem is she doesn’t really learn this for subsequent requests, although that is a different problem IMO.
  - zelos 6y ago
    > The only problem is she doesn’t really learn this for subsequent requests, although that is a different problem IMO. That's kind of the 'how do you take your tea?' problem, which I think really annoys users. (context: the first or second time you make tea for someone, you ask milk/sugar etc. Ask it after that and they're going to think you're pretty rude)

by dusted 6y ago

mcherm 6y ago

Asking for clarification is a GREAT response. I'd be happy if a human assistant OR Siri were to respond that way.

koala_man 6y ago
It sounds like a good idea until you realize how many interpretations any given question can have, and how many of them are extremely unlikely. "How far is Jupiter from the sun?" "Jupiter, Florida; or Jupiter the planet?" "How old is Donald Trump?" "There are 21 people with that name, do you mean ...?" "Call 911" "The emergency number or the English 90s boy band?"

Veen 6y ago

You're right that some people want to know the time in London, Ontario. But most people who ask the time in London don't. In the absence of context, the right thing is to give the time in the UK. If more context is given: "What time is it in London, Ontario," then obviously it should give the time in Ontario, and perhaps remember that this person is an exception to the rule.

onion2k 6y ago

There are probably _A_LOT_ of people who have a lot more to do with the non-british London who'd be very sad indeed if The Machines (tm) suddenly decided that EVERY request about London MUST ALWAYS be about the British one.. There will be a lot more people who are asking about the British London than people who are asking about their nearest London. Apple will be making far more people sad by defaulting to the local one. If Siri asked "Which London?" every time most people would get annoyed. What should happen from a UX perspective is that Siri should respond with "The time in London, UK, is..." which would inform the user that Siri is differentiating between different Londons, and that they need to specify a locality in order to narrow down the query to some other London if necessary. 99% of the time the user will get what they wanted first time, and the other 1% of the time the user will be informed that their query wasn't accurate enough.

dusted 6y ago
Selecting a default behaviour based on what "most people" will benefit from is great some cases, but mostly cases people will encounter only once. People who happen to fall beside the "most" category should not have to deal with that every single time. The right thing to do for Siri is to ask, maybe just once, which london you want to know the time for, if its not smart enough to infer it from something else it's learned about you. Assuming a person is physically closer to the non-british london, it's entirely likely that they travel there more often, and if the siri software has no other parameters tracked, then it's not unreasonable to assume that they're asking about that.
- ArgyleSound 6y ago
  > Assuming a person is physically closer to the non-british london, it's entirely likely that they travel there more often It really isn’t. I can see this being the case for people that live within, say, 100 miles of London, ON - but why would they want to know the time there in that case?
- sadfklsjlkjwt 6y ago
  I would guess that there are more people in North America who are interested in London than people in North America who are interested in London, Ontario. See what I did there? London (which is a major global city) doesn't need a qualifier anymore than New York does.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Assuming a person is physically closer to the non-british london, it's entirely likely that they travel there more often... It's also reasonable to assume they're in the same timezone as 'their' London and wouldn't need to ask what time it is in the local one. That's another reason to default to one further away, which for most people would be Britain.
spuz 6y ago
> What should happen from a UX perspective is that Siri should respond with "The time in London, UK, is..." This is exactly what Google assistant does. You can follow your question up with "what about London, Canada" and it will say "The time in London, ON, Canada is...". There are two things a good assistant will do: 1. save you time by making reasonable assumptions and 2. inform you which assumptions it has made.

darkwater 6y ago

TBH I think there are only two cases where you would answer with London, Ontario time: - you are from London, Ontario and are traveling in another TZ - you are in London, UK In all the other cases, without no further context, Londo UK should be used because it's one of the "capitals of the world"

smikhanov 6y ago
Your #2 is not good. I live in London, UK and when asking "What's the time in London", I mean London, UK. You may ask why do I need to specify London at all? Here's one of the possible scenarios, sounding very normal as human communication goes: (I'm in London wanting to phone my relatives in Moscow, which is several time zones away. I don't know the current time in either Moscow or London, and I don't know what's the time difference between the two as not all countries observe DST) Me: "Hey Siri, what's the time in Moscow?" Siri: "It's 10:35PM in Moscow, Russia" Me (thinking about whether I'll finish speaking in time for dinner): "Hey Siri, what's the time in London?" Siri: "It's 8:35PM in London, UK" Asking "What's the time?" instead of "What's the time in London?" sounds very unnatural here.
- darkwater 6y ago
  Fair enough, although I do see it as a not so common case. But maybe it is more common than people wanting to know the time in London, Canada while being in London, UK.

Someone 6y ago

That would get annoying very soon. If you look hard enough, almost any question is ambiguous. I think the best thing to do is to pick one interpretation, answer that, but make it clear which London you picked (“the time in London, England is 12:34”), and then, handle “no, the one in…” correctly. Falling back to “which one do you mean?” Should be the exception, as a voice assistent that can’t make that initial guess right most of the time isn’t worth using.

ninkendo 6y ago
> I think the best thing to do is to pick one interpretation, answer that, but make it clear which London you picked That’s actually the exact interaction you get with Siri today (I just checked): U: What time is it in London? S: It’s 7:09 AM in London, Canada U: No, London UK S: It’s 12:09 PM in London, England The only problem is she doesn’t really learn this for subsequent requests, although that is a different problem IMO.
- zelos 6y ago
  > The only problem is she doesn’t really learn this for subsequent requests, although that is a different problem IMO. That's kind of the 'how do you take your tea?' problem, which I think really annoys users. (context: the first or second time you make tea for someone, you ask milk/sugar etc. Ask it after that and they're going to think you're pretty rude)