{"id":9279,"date":"2017-09-19T03:14:48","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T03:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-design-head-loud-on-voice-silent-on-alexa-and-hardware.html"},"modified":"2017-09-19T03:14:48","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T03:14:48","slug":"facebook-design-head-loud-on-voice-silent-on-alexa-and-hardware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-design-head-loud-on-voice-silent-on-alexa-and-hardware.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook design head loud on voice, silent on Alexa and hardware"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Facebook has been reportedly<\/a> working on a video chat device and a smart speaker that would use a new voice interface, to compete against the likes of Amazon and Google in the race to control your living room; and it\u2019s also been testing as a voice search<\/a> feature for its app. Today, the company\u2019s head of design, Luke Woods, came out bullish on the promise of voice commands, squirmed when we asked him about Alexa apps, and simply shut down with a series of no-comments on the subject of hardware that used a voice interface.<\/p>\n

During an interesting session at TechCrunch Disrupt that ranged across topics like copying Snap (\u201cIn design school, we learned that there is nothing new anymore.\u201d); solving hard problems (\u201cWe treat edge cases as stress cases.\u201d) and the push to keep changing and developing design at Facebook (\u201cThere is a tendency to think we\u2019ve got it all figured out, but that couldn\u2019t be farther from the truth.\u201d), Woods was asked for his thoughts about new interfaces like voice.<\/p>\n

He cautioned it was still something that doesn\u2019t have the perfect product end point yet, but services like voice and voice search are promising.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting about these [newer] areas is that they hold a huge amount of promise\u2026these are some of the problems that people are most excited to solve,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what form [AR and VR] are going to take at the end or what\u2019s going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woods continued by describing voice search as \u201cvery promising. There are lots of exciting things happening\u2026. I love to be able to talk to the car to navigate to a particular place. That\u2019s one of many potential use cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voice navigation for Facebook is another thing he touched on, but for a particular group of users: the company has already built voice search and voice descriptors for people who have impaired vision, to be able to interact with the social network, and navigate to different features.<\/p>\n

Then things got a little less direct. \u201cHow would Facebook on Alexa work?,\u201d interviewer Josh Constine asked. \u201cThat\u2019s a very interesting question!\u201d Woods said, smiling. \u201cNo comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

When asked how Facebook would work on Alexa, FB’s head of design responds with a smile and no comment #TCDisrupt<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/kFerxuXCiX<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) September 18, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Later, on the sidelines of the stage, Woods also declined to comment on whether Facebook is working on hardware of any kind that could use voice services, with another smile.<\/p>\n

The lack of response is at odds with some of the other evidence that has been piling up around Facebook and what it may be looking to launch in coming months and years. In the range of tests that we and others have spotted Facebook running in different countries, what\u2019s notable is the profusion of voice-based services that are coming out.<\/p>\n

In July, a report emerged out of Taiwan<\/a> that the company was building a speaker with a screen that would let users message each other and browse photos \u2014 which sounded somewhat like Facebook equivalent of the Alexa Show<\/a>. The speaker, designed in the company\u2019s secretive Building 8 hardware lab, was supposedly getting made for a Q1 2018 launch.<\/p>\n

Just a week later, Bloomberg<\/a> appeared to corroborate the report out of Taiwan with another interesting twist: in addition to the speaker with a screen, there was another standalone speaker with no screen, akin to the Echo and Google\u2019s Home hub.<\/p>\n

Then, late in August, BusinessInsider discovered that the speaker device was being built under the codename Aloha<\/a>, with a launch date of May 2018.<\/p>\n

The voice noise did not end there. Earlier this month, Facebook code super sleuth Matt Navarra noted that Facebook\u2019s iOS app contained a large amount of code related to voice search<\/a>. These appear to be different from the accessibility voice features that Facebook has built.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n\t\t \"\"<\/p>\n

    voicesearch code<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n\t\t \"\"<\/p>\n

    voice search screenshot<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Facebook has made at least one interesting acquisition in speech and natural language recognition \u2014 the AI and natural language startup Wit.ai<\/a>, whose team helped build Facebook\u2019s bot strategy for its Messenger app. But in addition to that, it\u2019s also been looking to hire engineers with expertise in speech and natural language processing (see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

    These jobs mention other speech-based services that Facebook is working on, such as video captioning services for videos that are played on silent, but the expertise has wide applicability beyond that.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s the full video of the conversation:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/G7wUArrUS1Y\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Facebook has been reportedly working on a video chat device and a smart speaker that would use a new voice interface, to compete against the likes of Amazon and Google <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-9279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t