The case against conversational interfaces

This clearly elucidated a number of things I've tried to explain to people who are so excited about "conversations" with computers. The example I've used (with varying levels of effectiveness) was to get someone to think about driving their car by only talking to it. Not a self driving car that does the driving for you, but telling it things like: turn, accelerate, stop, slow down, speed up, put on the blinker, turn off the blinker, etc. It would be annoying and painful and you couldn't talk to your passenger while you were "driving" because that might make the car do something weird. My point, and I think it was the author's as well, is that you aren't "conversing" with your computer, you are making it do what you want. There are simpler, faster, and more effective ways to do that then to talk at it with natural language.

This rules out conversational UI for some tasks and applications but there are many where it will be useful and many where a hybrid would be best.

Even in a car, being able to control the windscreen wipers, radio, ask how much fuel is left are all tasks it would be useful to do conversationally.

There are some apps (im thinking of jira as an example) where i'd like to do 90% of the usage conversationally.

> Even in a car, being able to control the windscreen wipers, radio, ask how much fuel is left are all tasks it would be useful to do conversationally.

are you REALLY sure you want that?

how much fuel there is is a quick glance into the dash, and you can control precisely the radio volume without even looking.

'turn up the volume', 'turn down the volume a little bit', 'a bit more',...

and then a radio ad going 'get yourself a 3 pack of the new magic wipers...' and car wipers going off.

id hate conversational ui on my car.