Over the last few months I’ve been playing with our Amazon Echo and it’s amazing. When a song pops in my head, I just ask Alexa to play it. When I need to set a timer in the kitchen, I just tell Alexa to set it. This concept of interacting with an app with no visual interface isn’t new. What is new is that it works well, very well.
Here are a few examples of limited/no visual interface app interaction:
- Voice – Whether it’s Siri or Alexa, voice recognition technology is getting really good. I find talking to an app and interacting with it through voice much faster and more natural than clicking/touching a screen for simple interactions (assuming the app works well).
- Email – More apps are using email as way to interact where the system sends an email to a user and the user then responds to the email with data, content, etc. that then gets ingested and processed. Interacting over email, when done well, feels elegant and frictionless.
- Slack / Chat Rooms – Central chat rooms like Slack are becoming two-way communication services with outside apps (check out Slackbot). Similar to replying to an email to interact with a system, Slackbots can programmed to take in certain commands and inputs.
Look for this trend of limited/no visual interface app interaction to grow and become more commonplace.
What else? What are some more examples of limited/no visual interface app interaction?
David Cummings on Startups 