Introduction

In the future, user interfaces will move away from being touch-based and mouse-clicking web interfaces to voice and conversation-based user interfaces. On average, a person speaks about 20,000 words a day (http://bit.ly/2GYZ1du), which is the equivalent of reading half a book, and voice commands are 5 times faster to process (http://hci.stanford.edu/research/speech/index.html) than web user interfaces or typing. The huge efficiency of voice commands is attributed to the fact that speaking is natural to everyone. The technological leaps in natural language processing (NLP), thanks to machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), and increased computing power has made it possible to accurately understand and process complex human voices and speech patterns. This book will teach developers how to create voice-enabled applications using NLP platforms such as Google's Dialogflow and Amazon's Alexa Skills Skit, and deploy them to personal digital assistant devices, such as Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Google's Android Auto.

This chapter covers the history of voice user interfaces (VUIs) and discusses what VUIs are. It will help you understand the roles NLP platforms play in the development of VUIs. The chapter also introduces modern voice-enabled applications such as chatbots, personal digital assistant devices, and automobile virtual assistant systems, and how VUIs can be beneficial to such applications. You will then learn about user experience and design principles to deliver compelling voice-enabled applications to consumers. Finally, this chapter ends by looking at both current and predicted future capabilities of digital personal assistant devices.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

• History of VUIs
• Basic concepts of VUIs
• NLP platforms
• Benefits of VUIs
• Chatbots, Amazon Echo, Google Home, and automobile virtual assistant systems
• Best practices, design principles, and user experiences when creating VUIs
• Current and predicted future capabilities of digital personal assistant devices