Apple: Voice + Keyboard is the better experience

Apple’s announcement at WWDC 2022 illustrates both chatbot and voice assistant UI is outdated. Spoiler alert: Voicify already does this.

At WWDC 2022, Apple announced many exciting updates, but I was keenly interested in what they had to say about voice and dictation modalities.

Traditionally, when a user speaks to a device, a voice listening indicator lights up, and the interface visualizes the speech-to-text process by typing out the words on the screen. This experience is consistent whether you were dictating in an app like Notes, conversing with Siri, or commanding an in-app custom voice assistant.

Now, Apple has removed the voice listening indicator and placed a keyboard in the drawer UI at the bottom of the screen. This change confirms what we here at Voicify have believed for some time: multimodality is as essential for conversational input as it is for output.

Historically, custom voice assistants have been most concerned with conveying intent through multimodality. Whether verbal, text on screen, imagery, video, or any combination of those modalities, it is essential to allow the user to engage with the custom voice assistant in the most convenient manner. The misnomer about “voice” is that it is just voice – in reality, the conversation is the most crucial element. Voice is a powerful way to converse and the most natural. They allow the user to toggle between verbal and tactile inputs in real-time based on what they need.

The main takeaway is that when Apple updates a familiar user interface with all its resources, research, and design capabilities, they substantiate those who came before them. They validate the user interface for the enterprise, and most importantly, they are about to manage all our customers’ expectations.

As the sub-headline of this article notes, Voicify has been on this track for some time. Whether you put your Voicify-powered Custom Voice Assistant/Intelligent Virtual Assistant on a website, mobile app, or any other endpoint, the ability to take advantage of both verbal and text responses often exists.

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If you have questions about custom voice assistants or how Voicify can help, please don’t hesitate to contact us for a no-cost, no-commitment conversation.

About Voicify

Voicify, LLC is the world’s only end-to-end solution for creating, managing, and optimizing enterprise-owned voice assistants Our platform enables brands to create highly engaging and personalized voice experiences that can be automatically deployed to web and mobile products and services as well as a broad array of voice platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, IVR telephony systems, and more. You can learn more at www.voicify.com and on Twitter (@Voicify) or LinkedIn.