Intelligent voice assistants dominated CES 2018: mobile-developed features from Amazon and Google appear to be winning out for almost all use cases in future cockpit concepts. The ability to leverage consumer familiarity and build a seamless connected experience has led to direct and immediate implications for all automotive voice control suppliers.
A new report from the In-Vehicle User Experience (IVX) service at Strategy Analytics “CES 2018: Voice Assistants Invade, Autonomous Concepts Roll Out” presents its outlook on some of the technological advances announced at CES 2018 which will impact user experience within the automotive industry.
Key report findings:
- As consumer usage of voice recognition rises and CPU issues are resolved, design priorities must shift. Rather than develop a dedicated on-board solution, stakeholders must design around the current in-car UX, which includes an occupant’s preferred voice assistant.
- Suppliers must now be solution-agnostic and focus on the “good-enough” way to address the most crucial in-car scenarios, using a consumer’s desired agent.
Derek Viita, senior analyst and report author commented, “Voice will always be a crucial piece of the automotive HMI puzzle no matter the path to full autonomy; and context-aware voice assistants add great value to the on-board UX. However, the on-board voice experience has traditionally been limited by slow computing power and poor design. Consumer expectations are outpacing development; the opportunities for disruption will be plentiful.”
Chris Schreiner, director of Syndicated Research, UXIP, added, “Even though many mobile-based systems are not particularly natural, useful or conversational, they are increasingly familiar thanks to wider implementation outside the car.
While suppliers such as iNago, iFlyTek, Nuance, and Voicebox all exhibited robust voice solutions for the car at CES 2018, the proliferation of digital assistants in the car will make certain specialised suppliers irrelevant in the near future”.
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