It is 2015, and mobile technology is deeply and intractably enmeshed in people’s lives. A number of industries are undergoing seismic shifts, with radical intra-organizational reshuffling and rethinking of long-established “rules.” “Disruption” is the word of the day in both technology and business; how we eat, work, and travel is all rapidly changing.
Despite all this, “the rate of mobile commerce growth continues to lag mobile device proliferation” (Forrester). In a 2014 study, 41% of consumers avoid mobile purchasing due to small screen size. This is the second most popular reason given for not engaging in smartphone shopping after “[I] prefer shopping using a desktop computer or tablet” (which still doesn’t explain the why behind the preference).
So, it looks like small screens are pretty problematic for commerce, at least in cases where the primary interface is text-based. And there is a limit to how big a screen can get before it no longer fits cozily in the palm of your hand. As consumer interest increases in smartwatches and other wearables, the need for a solution to the UX problem grows more urgent.
Fortunately, an intelligent voice interface enables apps to sidestep the issue of screen size altogether. Clumsy keyboard entry is replaced with speech recognition that is quickly approaching human levels of accuracy, and with the ability to ask conversational follow-up questions, your query can be refined in much less time than it takes to navigate a series of drop-down menus or wait for new content to load.
MindMeld provides a platform that makes it easy to add a voice interface that understands spoken queries and provides smart results. Try it out for free and see what you think.
