I am spending a lot of time thinking about conversational interfaces, and how APIs are driving the voice and bot layers of the space. While I am probably not as excited about Siri, Alexa and the waves of Slack bots being developed as everyone else, I am interested in the potential when it comes to some of the technology and business approaches behind them.
When it comes to these "conversational interfaces", I think voice can be interesting, but not always practical for actually interacting with everyday systems--I just can't be talking to devices to get what I need done each day, but maybe that is just me. I'm also not very excited about the busy, chatty bots in my Slack channels, as I'm having trouble even dealing with all the humans in there, but then again maybe this is just me.
I am interested in the interaction between these conversational interfaces and the growing number of API resources I track on, and how the voice and bot applications which are done thoughtfully, might be able to do some interesting things and enable some healthy interactions. I am also interested in how webhooks, iPaaS, and push approaches like we are seeing out of Zapier, can influence the conversation around conversational interfaces.
Conceptually I can be optimistic about voice enablement, but I work in the living room across from my girlfriend, I'm just not going to be talking a lot to Siri, Alexa or anyone else...sorry. Even if I move back to our home office, I'm really not going to be having a conversation with Siri or Alex to get my work done, but then again maybe its just me. I'm also really aware of the damaging effects of too much messaging, chat, and push notification channels open, so the bot thing just doesn't really work for me, but then again maybe it's me.
I am more of a fan of asynchronous conversations than I am of the synchronous variety, which I guess could be more about saved conversations, crafted phrases or statements that run as events triggered by different signals, or even by me when I need via my browser--like Push by Zapier does. I see these as conversations, that enable single or a series of API enabled events to occur. This feels more like orchestration, or scripted theater which accomplishes more of what I'm looking to do than synchronous conversations would accomplish for me.
Anyways, just some exercising of my brain when it comes to conversational interfaces. I know that I'm not the model user that voice and bot enablement will be targeting with their services, but I can't be all that out in left field (maybe I am). Do we really want to have conversations with our devices or the imaginary elves that live on the Internet in our Slacks and Facebook chats? Maybe for some things? What I'd really like to see is a number of different theaters where I can script and orchestrate one time, and recurring conversations with the systems and services I depend on daily, with the occasional synchronous engagement required with myself or other humans, when it is required.
