2013-11-20

I was chatting to Nick about voice control on the Kinect/XBox One - and the fact that when either of us is alone we don't tend to speak much, if at all - so the thought of talking to the machinery feels very odd.

And I realised the other reason I don't like it - the failure mode of typing is that I hit a wrong key, with a recovery action of "stare at the keyboard and make sure I press the right one next" but the failure mode of voice control is that nothing happens, and the recovery mode is "Try again repeatedly, with no real idea of what you need to do differently to make it work".

I find "things not doing what they're supposed to" incredibly frustrating - it's one of the main drivers of my computing knowledge - struggling for ages with computers, until I've fixed whatever the problem was, is a great way to learn how they work. But a voice interface is mushy and vague, it's not something I _can_ understand without seeing all sorts of diagnostics which just aren't available to the users. Which, largely, means it's just not for me.

2013-11-20

Interesting Links for 20-11-2013

What I don't like about voice control