I know we’re used to relate the notion of IVRs with arcane self-service over-the-phone systems and IVR jails, yet a company called Moshi found away to leverage the notion of “Interactive Voice Response” in a totally distinctive way.
The Moshi IVR Alarm Clock is the first one to my knowledge that allows you to set the time and the alarm by using your voice. To start interacting with it, you simply say “Hello Moshi” and the clock responds with “Command Please” (I know, a little VUI help never hurt anyone). It currently supports a list of 12 commands including things such as “time”, “set alarm”, “temperature” and “help” (apparently “help” still has its uses).
A demo is currently available at the Moshi website which shows how the phone responds to various commands and Endgadet has some more details about it. Personally, I think it’s pretty cool, plus the price is not bad either ($50). But from a design perspective, I think it’s just a shame they didn’t invest a little bit more in having better sounding prompts (with a professional voice talent), which combined with the use of more natural, concatenated prompting, would’ve yield much better results (let’s face it, anyone still concatenating time in the form of “six” “o’clock” “a m” is being a lousy designer).
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