Making 'Things' talk: Why we need voice interfaces for the IoT

© 2016 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. 1
The walls and
appliances are talking( )

billion
Devices will be connected by 2020 – that’s nearly
3x as many as in 2014.
According to Strategy Analytics

There are smart homes…

In New York City and
Chicago, the smart city is
here – and it’s keeping track
of everything
Plans are underway to create the
nation’s first “quantified community” in
New York City. 17 million square feet of
commercial and residential land will
track data on air quality, pedestrian
traffic, energy production and
consumption, and the health and
activity levels of workers and residents.
…and even
smart cities.

The Internet of Things
permeates life at home, in
the workplace, and on the
go.

Safe
driving
Workplace
productivity
Retail
experiences
Home
automation
& securityHealth &
fitness
Home
entertainment

From 2014 to 2020, the
number of connected
smart home devices will
grow by 1,448%.

And by 2020, consumer
spending on smart
systems for the
household will reach $130
billion globally.

Today, the industry is still in its
nascent stages; manufacturers
are innovating according to their
own rules.

Unique form factors are
being designed for each
environment and
application.

Home
entertainment
Home
automation
Workplace
productivity
Health &
fitness

By being connected, these
devices offer new levels of
intelligence – but
additional features or
intelligence shouldn’t
mean more complexity.

It’s the user interface that should make
it easy to tap into this intelligence.

Multimodal design
featuring touch, gesture,
and voice allows you to
interact with these
devices in many different
ways and in many
different environments.

But with new types of IoT
devices emerging, voice is
becoming the most
natural interface across
these varying form
factors.

Menus, buttons, and screens look
different or are nonexistent device
to device.

Speech is the unifying modality.

And it’s becoming more and more
popular.

billion+
average interactions from connected smart
devices are handled each month by the Nuance
Mobile Cloud.

In 2014, the number of
smart TV customers using
their voice to find content
grew by 230%.
Data from Nuance Mobile Cloud

Why? It’s
easy,
natural, and
accurate.

Even the industrial,
manufacturing, and
construction markets
have the potential to be
transformed by IoT
devices.

The Atheer AiR 3D smart glasses boosting worker productivity
through voice and gesture interaction.

As each of these IoT
devices and form factors are
being designed to serve
very specific functions
within specific settings, the
voice solutions for these
devices need to be just as
specialized.

You wouldn’t talk to your
thermostat the same way
as your smartfridge, or
talk to your coffee maker
the same way as your
home robot, right?

“What can I
make for a side
dish that pairs
well with
tuna?”

“Where do
I go to find
the
treasure?”

So, how do we make sure
we are continually
meeting these burgeoning
user expectations?

It all starts with the
developer.

Voice is quickly becoming
an integral part of a
developers’ toolkit.
As such, developer
programs are expanding.

“Voice recognition is an exciting
new method of interaction for
Pebble and it has created an
opportunity for developers to
enhance their existing applications,
or create highly engaging new
applications designed around the
spoken word.”

It’s essential that voice
solutions are not only
customizable, but that they’re
flexible – allowing developers
to design for the experience
they want without limitations.

Voice
recognition
Text-to-
speech
Natural
language
understanding
Like these tools…
…that are supported by

Vincent, do something funny
Let’s look at an example:

Without a customized speech and NLU
model, you could choose to hard-code
that sentence and map it to the
appropriate functions in your app.
This is funny?
If (UserSaid == “Vincent, do something funny.”) {
putHatOn(“red”, “party”) {
}

But other users might say…
If (UserSaid == “Vincent, do something funny.”) {
} else if (UserSaid == “Can you show me something funny?”) {
} else if (UserSaid == “I need a laugh.”) {
} else if (UserSaid == “Do something funny with a hat.”) {
} else if (UserSaid == “Make me laugh please.”) {
Make me laugh please.
Can you show me
something funny?
I need a laugh.
Do something funny with a hat.

Custom speech and NLU
allows you to deal with many,
many permutations of user
requests, providing the
scalability, flexibility, and the
framework to be responsive
with your data.

With the right tools and
access to data,
developers can build for
the IoT – continually
improving user
experiences as their
devices get ‘smarter’
over time.

So what does the future of
the future look like?

Eventually, as IoT evolves,
some manufacturers (and
developers) will begin
building more with cross-
platform interfaces and
connectivity in mind.

TVLike this
smart
home
hub.

Interoperability between
IoT systems is critically
important to capturing
maximum value;
manufacturers today are
aware of (or beginning to
discover) this potential that
could be unlocked through
IoT.

For this to happen on a
large scale, manufacturers
will have to work together
and develop standards for
interoperability.

Some organizations have
already started.

In this model, voice will
remain at the core of the
interface, because…

And as IoT evolves, there will
continue to be waves of new-to-
market innovative devices that will
still require their own distinct
interfaces and voice experiences.

New
devices
like social
robots.

“Social robots like Jibo will
redefine the way people interact
with technologies in their home,
and among Jibo’s sensorial inputs,
none is more vital to the consumer
experience than voice.”
-Steve Chambers, CEO, Jibo

Using voice as a means of
interaction is here to stay.

After all, it’s
human nature
to have a
conversation –
whether those
be with another
human or with
a device.

Armed with the right tools,
developers will be able to
create specialized voice
experiences for the
billions of connected
devices yet to come.

Developers, are you ready for
the IoT?
See how you can get started with Nuance
Mix Beta.
Sign up now

Making 'Things' talk: Why we need voice interfaces for the IoT

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Making 'Things' talk: Why we need voice interfaces for the IoT