Hello… hello… hello…

Hello… hello… hello… That's what most of us call an Echo, but if Amazon has its way, the first thing that comes to mind in the future will be its far-field voice recognition device, which allows you to control all sorts of things using the Alexa Voice service.

Say the wake up command (Alexa) and you can ask Echo to do all sorts of magic things just using your voice.

What’s interesting about these are the partner companies working with them, basically apps for the device (Amazon calls them skills). Not only can you ask Alexa to play your favourite music, set an alarm or tell a joke, you can order an Uber, a take-away via JustEat, ask the Guardian for the latest headlines, control your heating (via Hive) or lighting (via Hue), to name a few.

Why is this important? Well, you can expect the world of far-field voice devices to hot up. Google Home launched in the US at the end of last year. As more and more companies look to partner, you can expect your clients to want to know how and what their customers want to be controlling by simply using their voice.

Colin Rice
Research Director, Discovery

This article was first published in InBrief magazine, April 2017
Copyright © Association for Qualitative Research, 2017