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Alexa can add things to your shopping list but not take them off. You have to manually delete items in your shopping cart. This exemplifies why Alexa was neve
by skhunted 2y ago
Alexa can add things to your shopping list but not take them off. You have to manually delete items in your shopping cart. This exemplifies why Alexa was never going to be successful. It is a user hostile experience.
- loa_in_ 2y agoI can see why it was the case from engineering standpoint: adding a name from spoken phrase to a list is trivial, but looking up an item (that might not even be there) from a list based on a spoken phrase is prone to transcription errors. The user might refer to it with different phrasing than when it was added too. This is feasible only very recently with LLMs.
- brianwawok 2y agoThat’s a terrible argument. You found the item to add it. Just search a list 1/100000000 as big to find the item to remove. I can do with this Python and text to speech with no AI.
- skhunted 2y agoI don’t see why one direction is harder than the other. The only thing that makes sense to me is that Amazon is user hostile and tries to dupe people into buying stuff even if they don’t want it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- josefritzishere 2y agoAmazon is pretty generally user hostile. We see it in their corporte behavior too. I think for that reason culturally they'd struggle to design a device users want to interact with.
- davidthewatson 2y agoThat's right. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14149986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14149986 We all wanted an experience as simple as interacting with the human at Whole Foods checkout OR the robot at the self-checkout, but what we got was this cacophony of anything but what you came here for that is amazon.com and most modern software design. People wonder why I long for Amazon Go years after I left Seattle and recommended that approach to various retail executives. Is there any better way to subvert retail than to promote stealing the merchandise as the ultimate UX? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go
- leni536 2y agoIt's far more mundane than that. Adding items to the list is a core feature, so there is plenty of engineering time getting assigned to it. Removing items from the list is a feature that has negative return, so nobody wants to work on it.
- princevegeta89 2y agoIn addition to that, the inability of Alexa to just answer your question and shut up seemed to have gone way off the tracks. For most of the things I ask my Echo Show, it just follows up with "by the way, xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx.... Pricing is $3/month. Do you want it?" Fuck you. This is worse than the salespeople that bother me at Department Stores.
- ultrarunner 2y agoThis is the single thing that killed ours.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoMinus the sales pitch (which I've never had), this is one of the complaints I have about Google Assistant. "By the way, if you ever want to X, just say Y". Just answer the question asked and then shut up immediately. And, preferably, learn to answer the question asked with more brevity, as well. If I ask "what's the high for today", I don't need to hear "In Cityname, expect a high of 90 degrees", just say "90".
- im3w1l 2y agoThe reason they say "In cityname" is probably because they aren't 100% certain of your city. The preface lets you catch the mistake if it makes it.
- JoshTriplett 2y agoYeah, I'm aware, though in general the devices have a location specified. But even then, "90 in cityname" would suffice. There are many other interactions in which almost every word is unnecessary noise and can't even be explained away as a confirmation.
- ssl-3 2y agoThe shopping aspect is approximately useless. It is an awful experience: It seems to be incapable of producing good results, and it is impossible to correct the results without using some manner of computer. This means that it's a lot like shopping with a [pocket] computer is, but with even more steps. (Nobody wants this in its present form. It does not fucking work.) I do enjoy some aspects of having an always-listening device that I can command to do stuff (like play some music, or to turn on a light, or look up some random factoid), but they've made it almost impossible to succeed at using it to do the thing they seem to so-desperately seek: Allowing me to spend my money more freely on Amazon.
- mFixman 2y agoI'm glad that Amazon thought they could make money with Alexa; mine is currently fantastic as an universal remote control (using Zigbee) and music player (using Spotify). I could see Ameca only being compatible with Amazon services if it had been launched a few years later.
- PaulHoule 2y agoFor me the killer app was listening to music while doing the dishes.
- janalsncm 2y agoIf Alexa could do the dishes for me that would absolutely be a killer app.
- CamperBob2 2y agoTie it to an as-yet-unknown startup company that sends people to your house very quickly to perform individual light housekeeping tasks. "MicroMaids.com" or some such. Sounds invasive and scary, but I would've said (and probably did say) similar things about a service that connected you with strangers for the purpose of getting into their cars.
- 2y ago
- whateveracct 2y agoheh I'm sure a PM with a relevant metric punted on that ticket plenty times.
- o_nate 2y agoI ask Alexa to remove things from my shopping list all the time. It always asks you to confirm, but then it does remove it. Sounds like maybe you're talking about the Amazon shopping cart, not the generic shopping list feature?
- tiltowait 2y agoHow does shopping with one even work in practice? Most items I buy on Amazon require careful scrutiny to make sure I’m getting the right thing. What I want is almost never the first result. This is true even in areas that feel like they should be easy, like video games.
- jasonlotito 2y agoIt's great for repeat items. Stuff I've bought before I need more of. Buy "X" and the first item is the thing I've bought before. I use it that way when I know I need it, but I don't want to forget. So I just say it, and it's done and I don't need to remember or record it somewhere or pull out a phone or what have you. I use it sometimes for new items, usually when I know what I want and I specify brand. If it's not the first item, I can easily see the other options on the screen and it's not much to say to buy the second or third item on the list.
- eastbound 2y agoBut they jack up the prices every few months, right? You can get the original at the original price, but from the new vendor “OUFIOU”…
- dylan604 2y agoFor those that do have an Alexa, how does this work? Do you have to haggle with Alexa, and then it picks from the different sellers that meets your haggling? It seems like a much longer conversation is needed than "Alexa, add Tide Pods to my list" as Amazon propaganda wants you to believe.
- fckgw 2y agoIf you say "add Tide Pods" then it adds the most popular listing of Tide Pods, shipped and sold by Amazon to your cart. Which is how 98% of people buy stuff on Amazon already. You may have to specify a quantity but if you're adding detergent, paper towels or whatever else popular, name brand item it's pretty straight forward.
- 2y ago
- theGnuMe 2y agoThe app on ios is dreadful...
- dietsprite 2y agoYeah, how they don't just build a native app and hire any UX agency of any repute given their immense resources and investment is beyond me.