I think that Voice Technology is going to revolutionize many industries in the near future and I’m ridiculously excited about how we can utilize this technology to increase the quality of our lives.
In this post, I wanted to share some insights in regards to where I think the Alexa Smart Home team might find some interesting, new opportunities and in what industries it ought to focus its efforts in terms of business development.
1. The Senior Citizen Space
The first opportunity I see is in the retirement home / senior citizen space. According to this article, over one million Americans reside in assisted-living facilities today, a number expected to double by 2030. Many of these retirees have been utilizing Alexa on their own to reduce loneliness and set medication reminders.
According to Front Porch, a nonprofit organization that’s actually been running focus groups with these Alexa devices (with the end goal of exploring ways to integrate Alexa-enabled devices into other retirement communities), most elderly citizens use their devices to set alarms, stream music, listen to audiobooks, and check the weather, sport scores etc.
If we had to graph a matrix depicting an elderly citizen’s top priorities combined with the benefits of a virtual assistant (such as Alexa), it would look something like this:
The first quadrant is predominantly based on research from this article and this one. Evidence shows that senior citizens highly enjoy interacting with basic features such as setting an alarm, checking the news, sports scores etc. These are low-complexity, highly useful features that form the backbone of a successful Alexa-Senior Citizen dynamic.
I also see the senior citizen space as a huge opportunity specifically for the Alexa Smart Home Team. This is primarily because with old age comes a host of visual and hearing impairments that can severely impact one’s ability to utilize basic hardware appliances. Thermostats become harder to adjust, you can’t seem to remember if you locked your door, you don’t want to have to climb the stairs to check for something etc..
The biggest challenge here is of course being able to train these senior citizens in being able to use Alexa and connect it with appliances. However, senior citizens themselves don’t necessarily have to be the ones having to figure out how to connect everything (think retirement homes or senior living homes). They just need to know how to communicate with Alexa, which is trivial.
The second quadrant, to the left of the first one, represent the main challenges that Alexa faces when facing user adoption in the senior citizen market. Note that these “challenges” don’t necessarily reflect truths about the Alexa system: rather, they are preconceived opinions that need to be addressed. As Zach noted in this Alexa Smart Home Partner Network Podcast, safety is indeed an issue that bothers prospective Alexa Smart Home users and this is even more so the case with senior citizens. Privacy, according to this article, is also something people might be concerned about.
The third quadrant is relatively unimportant.
The fourth quadrant reflects features that Alexa does indeed possess, such as the ability to connect with social media apps and call Ubers, but ones that ultimately are not the highest of priority for your average 89 year old.
2. The Hospitality Industry
Just like how Alexa was recently integrated inside a Seattle Mariners suite, I see great opportunity for expansion into the hospitality industry (in pro sports, live entertainment, hotels themselves).
Along with its usual myriad of applications, Alexa, within a specific hotel use case, could be used to order room service, switch between different types of entertainment, and speak to the concierge, amongst a wide variety of other things.
This, of course, is something that’s already been done. The Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas installed an Amazon Echo in all 4,700 of its rooms, and this piece by Bloomberg details how Marriott is testing both the Amazon Echo and Apple’s Siri in its lodgings.
Next, I wanted to propose that Alexa also be expanded into the college dorm room.
The College Dorm Room: Alexa’s Perfect Use Case
As incoming freshmen move into their college dorm rooms every fall, what if they had their own personal assistant guiding them through the myriad of events occurring during welcome week, helping them locate a building, or find out what time they have class tomorrow? Not to mention setting their alarm or any of the other smart home features that Alexa is capable of executing. For example:
College students are also arguably the most tech-savvy demographic out there, so a smart-dorm powered by Alexa would in theory be very well received.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I’m just really excited by the wide variety of use-cases that exist for Amazon’s Alexa platform, and specifically the Smart Home System.
The most insightful thing in my opinion is that for embedded technologies like Alexa, there aren’t that many natural restrictions on target demographics because the potential for technology to seamlessly integrate into our lives is so high. For example, it is considerably easier for a senior citizen to ask Alexa the baseball game’s score than it is for him to have to pull out his smartphone and check manually.
Whether it be in a retirement home, a hotel room, or even a bright faced student’s dorm room, Alexa can make all our lives easier and allow us to focus on what’s important.