Google / Future Forecast / 2 weeks
The best way to integrate voice assistants into our lives is by integrating them into our homes.
Nuts & Bolts
Google Asked Us…
To figure out how voice assistants can play a bigger role in people’s lives by 2025.
We Got to Work…
Learning how voice assistants are currently being used by consumers.
Studying how user significance can be measured.
Figuring out which groups were already getting the most value from voice assistants (hint: it was smart home early adopters).
In the End…
We recommended focusing on smart homes in order to fully integrate voice assistants into people’s lives.
We provided thought-starters to help companies, like Google, push for the standardization of smart home technology.
We presented our work to Google’s Head of YouTube & Music Marketing.
The Voice Assistant
Current Landscape
The use of voice assistants is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years. Worldwide, it is estimated that the number of voice assistants will double in three years, from roughly four billion in 2020 to eight billion in 2023.
While the adoption of these devices is increasing, many consumers have yet to truly integrate them into their lives. More than a third of consumers aged 25-49 are not using voice assistants on a daily basis. Consumers aged 18-24 were even less likely to report using them every day.
Current Use
Currently, most people use voice assistants to perform tasks that are not all that difficult to begin with: playing music, looking up the weather, and asking questions that any search engine could answer.
User Significance
In order to understand how to integrate voice assistants into people’s lives by 2025, we decided to compare them to a truly revolutionary technology of the past: the washing machine.
The modern washing machine transformed laundry from a multi-day, labor-intensive process to a simple 30-minute chore.
Jessie Halsell of New Mexico describes getting her first washing machine in Eleanor Arnold’s book, Voices of American Homemakers :
Voice assistant devices currently save the user a couple of minutes at most.
Reddit user Thomas500ml describes his frustration with voice assistants. He receives more than 900 upvotes :
“It was something to own the first washing machine in that little community. A number of people come [sic] in to see it work—to see if it would work. Frankly, I hoped it would, and it did. What a blessing for someone to have. […] I got loose from that old washboard.”
“Voice assistants such as Alexa are completely [sic] useless. They are a complete gimmick, and nothing more than a toy just to impress people. Everything that it does can be done with another device way more efficiently without obnoxiously chanting out a voice command.”
One way to measure user significance is with an effort/value matrix. There are four potential outcomes:
Low user effort/high user value (below in green) - These products are almost guaranteed to become adopted en masse.
High user effort/low user value (below in red) - These products have virtually no chance of widespread adoption.
Low user effort/low user value (below in yellow) - These products are likely to become adopted to some degree, but not universally.
High user effort/high user value (below in yellow) - These products are likely to become adopted to some degree, but not universally.
The good news is that voice assistants are already fairly low-effort. However, in order to become truly integrated into the lives of consumers they need to provide greater value by 2025.
The Smart Home
Opportunity
Unlike the average consumer, early adopters of smart homes were already deriving significant value from voice assistants. We joined Google Home Users Facebook groups (what better way to find an audience who clearly loves the product?) and asked them to show us what the devices looked like in their homes. We found that they often engineered it in unique ways, such as putting it in their shower or recess lights, for greater connectivity. They often had more than one device and used it to control other appliances.
Category Overview
In 2020, the smart home category is fairly fragmented. It can be divided into six sub-categories: control and connectivity, energy management, security, comfort and lighting, smart appliances, and home entertainment. According to Statista, the category’s US revenue is $2.3B in 2019 and it is expected to nearly double to $4.7B by 2024.
User Significance
Smart home technology has the inherent potential for high user value. Like voice assistant technology, it can save you time. Many smart home devices also add value by securing your home and saving you money.
The Future Recommendations
Smart homes and voice assistant technology are both expected to become a much larger part of our lives in the next five years. By closely connecting voice assistants to smart homes, companies like Google ensure that voice assistant technology plays a truly significant role in people’s lives.
Brand Architecture:
What if customers knew which products worked together from the start?
The current fragmentation of the smart home market means that devices do not always work very well together. As smaller brands are bought out, lack of connectivity will become less of a barrier. Instead of buying products from a host of different brands, future consumers will opt into brand ecosystems, much as we currently do with Mac and PC products.
While larger tech companies have been acquiring smaller players for some time (Google bought Nest in 2014), it is important that consumers see these products as falling under one umbrella. Although Google initially treated Nest as a separate entity, they folded it back into their hardware group in 2018. Renaming Google Home products to Google Nest was a smart, clarifying move that should serve as a future model. Undoubtably, this will require a renewed commitment to data security and privacy. Keeping brands separate allows tech giants to benefit from the greater consumer trust enjoyed by small companies. As parent companies bring products into their ecosystem, they will need to reassure consumers they can be trusted.
Product Positioning:
What makes Google Nest Mini an assistant and your microwave an appliance?
Currently, almost all voice assistants are marketed as merely assistants. As these devices become more intertwined with smart home technology, brands should adjust their messaging to position voice assistants as appliances. Instead of the device that can make you dinner reservations, companies should market voice assistants as devices that can help you actually make the dinner. Brands should also expand where voice assistants appear in online and in-store retail, moving beyond the electronics aisle and into the appliances section.
Product Development:
What if my Google Nest Hub could tell me if my home has termites?
Companies should prioritize research and development that emphasizes prevention, safety, and value over convenience. Imagine a voice assistant device that can detect lead in urban tap water or warn you that your roof needs to be replaced. As technology helps to alleviate significant problems for homeowners and renters push for these devices to become the industry standard.
ST: Tory Nagel