Product innovation through “voice”

JC’s Newsletter #20

Dear friends,

Every week, I’m sharing an essay that relates to what we are building and learning at Alan. Those essays are fed by the article I’m lucky enough to read and capitalise on.

I’m going to try to be provocative in those essays to trigger a discussion with the community. Please answer, comment, and ping me!

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Introduction

Today, let’s explore the present and the future. The way we work is undergoing a complete transformation. 

In just the past few months, I've changed my habits five times. I find it absolutely extraordinary to think that the way we will interact between humans and machines will continue to evolve. 

I imagine that in the near future, we will have eye-machine or brain-machine interfaces. But we're not there yet with the technology, although it increasingly seems inevitable. 

Until then, I think we will type less and less and will move more and more towards a voice-machine mode. 

While this has been promised for several years, for me, at least, it's only been in the last two or three months that I've really seen its use. 

The use has become possible because the technologies have advanced to a point that was unimaginable a few years ago. In fact, once a technology passes a certain threshold, a tipping point, the technology becomes usable whereas it wasn't before. 

For Alan, this means two things. 

First, it's about how each person at Alan can work. 

• For example, I almost never write responses to my Slack threads or my GitHub discussions anymore, but I dictate them to my Memo app in French. Then I use Gladia or MacWhisper to get the transcript, then I use ChatGPT or Mistral to translate and structure.

• I dictate, because it's easier for me to express my thoughts, to be more precise, etc. 

• This allows me to work much faster, to not always be in front of my computer and to be able to read things on my tablet (Remarkable), and to process vast amounts of information. 

• It allows me to have more nuanced discourse as well, it allows me to think while walking, because speaking and using voice, especially when we take the time to communicate and do it, allows us to say more things that we wouldn't necessarily take the time to write. To thank, to add nuance to our words, and to explain why. 

• I believe it significantly improves the quality of my contributions. 

Secondly, from Alan's perspective, what does this mean? 

• It surely means that we need to start thinking more about Voice to Text and Text to Voice uses for our members and customers. 

• How do we ensure that our members and admins can exchange with us using voice and that we provide them with the best possible responses everywhere in our product.

How do you think Voice is going to change the way you operate and you build products?

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Some good articles I have read this week

👉 Adult Life (Farnam Street)

• Talent and potential mean nothing if you can't consistently do the boring things when you don't feel like doing them.

👉 Could These YouTubers Build the Next Disney World? (The Split)

• With 20% of GenZ identified as LGBTQ+ in 2021, it triggers some questions about what we could do in our product to better address the needs of the different subgroups.

👉 Tweet by Shreyas Doshi (X)

• “Optimism on goals, Pessimism on operations”

• Be highly vigilant on what you can control, think through what could go wrong, anticipate risks and problems, take actions, and be creative.

• Be optimistic on the ambitious goals.

👉 New survey shows perceptions of AI use in healthcare are changing (Tebra)

• prove the quality of healthcare, reduce costs, and increase accessibility is powerful 

• Only 1 in 10 healthcare professionals use AI today, but 50% want to adopt it.

  • I also found this super interesting: “After reviewing AI’s medical advice, 95% of healthcare professionals shifted toward a more positive perspective”

• 1 in 4 patients are more likely to talk to an AI chatbot than attend therapy.  

  • Of those who have already turned to ChatGPT for therapy advice, 80% felt it was an effective alternative.

👉 Barry Diller (IAC/Expedia) emails: I’m on the edge of revolt (Internal Tech Emails)

• Very dangerous if your distribution only depends on Google as it was the case for IAC/Expedia. 

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Let’s talk about this together on LinkedIn or on Twitter. Have a good week!

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