The hidden revolution in Mary Meeker’s internet trends report
Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report this year touched upon an increasing interest in messaging and voice interfaces; combined they signal a revolution that could be just around the corner: the end of the interface.
Facebook is currently dominating the chat-as-interface market with Messenger and WhatsApp leading the pack; the latter averaging almost a billion users sending over 30 billion messages a day. In the last year, messaging services have rapidly overtaken social media sites as the go-to place to connect with friends either individually or in groups. Chat is the perfect package of a form of communication that we all inherently understand, enhanced with rich media and all wrapped up in a simple interface.
However, what’s really driving the revolution in messaging isn’t coming from the interface itself (or lack thereof), but the automation that is happening behind the scenes. Bots are the ace card of services like Slack, Telegram and Facebook Messenger. For a computer, understanding a customer’s question in their individual idiolect and replying is an incredibly difficult thing to get right and one developers have been trying to crack for years. However, this year saw the emergence of bots that are able to learn and evolve; and they’re getting it right with spooky accuracy.
If step one was the adoption of chat platforms by customers, then step two is the adoption of chat-as-interface into a business’s existing platform, app or site. This is something we are already starting to see as registration flows or customer service enquiries become replaced by bot-powered chat interfaces. The real test will be step three, when businesses start to relinquish their own platforms and instead focus on integrating with the customer’s chosen platform of communication; be that Siri, Cortana or Google Now.
Meeker’s report also shows the growing interest in mobile voice assistants, with an average of 65 per cent of people with a smartphone using the likes of Siri or Cortana. By 2020, Meeker also predicts that at least 50 per cent of all searches will be through images or speech. The rise of voice interaction devices such as the Amazon Echo is a logical progression of the chat trend. However, what stands Amazon Echo apart is the complete lack of a graphic interface. Amazon Echo’s persona 'Alexa' is a bot-powered virtual assistant in the home where a lack of time and being pre-occupied makes opening and using a phone a tedious and laborious activity. By integrating with smart devices and businesses users can ask Alexa to play music, add groceries to a shopping list or order an Uber.
Put simply, adding an item to a shopping list app on a smartphone could take up to 30 interactions (including taking it out of your pocket, unlocking, typing, locking and returning); alternatively, asking Alexa is one. And that is the true power of an intelligent voice interface.
Services such as these are powerful because they are customisable, adaptable and evolve with the user’s lifestyle. They can be built upon, can connect smart devices as they’re made available and can start to truly become the home of a user’s digital ecosystem. But where does it leave the designers, creatives and front end developers of this world? How do we advertise, engage or sell to customers away from their screens? In digital, change can happen overnight, or it can shift underneath our feet without us noticing; to truly stay ahead we need to see this digital shift not as an end, but a new beginning.
Tom Moran is senior experience designer at TH_NK