The problem with Siri
by Rodolfo Rosini
Dear Siri,
it’s not me, it’s you. Let me give you an example…
“Siri, I would like to book a hotel for tonight”
“Here are the list of nearby hotels” [List hotels based on a Yelp search, no indication if any of the hotels has actual availability for tonight. Clicking on the list takes me to the super shitty Apple Maps. Clicking on the hotel in Maps lets me call the hotel]
(The first on the list is the Radisson) “Siri, book me the Radisson”
“Here are your Bing search result for ‘raisin’”
See? I have millions apps that can book the hotel already installed on my iPhone. I don’t want to call the hotel, thank you. Chances are that if I am talking to a piece of software means that I prefer doing a transaction with another piece of software and not call a hotel, figure out my corporate rate, my credit card number, my frequent flier thingie for hotels. All this data already exists in my phone and in my email account. If not, ASK.
On top of this our relationship is purely transactional. Once you spit out your result you forget about me. Me. Your user. I mean have you ever seen Tron? Users are important! And you need to remember the past few seconds of interaction to understand if the queries are linked, such as it was in this case.
85% of iOS users have never used Siri and the main reason is that it is a gimmick that does not solve any real problem. Yet.
Whilst in Arrakis 