Voice assistants such as Google Assistant, Alexa or Siri are here to stay. According to a study by Juniper Research, around 8 billion voice assistants will be in use worldwide by 2023.

Among the devices that incorporate voice assistants, smartphones are undoubtedly at the top of the list. More and more mobile applications are integrating and using smart assistants as interfaces. They work as interfaces so that the user can access their capabilities and functionalities by simply using a voice command. 

Among the use cases that users nowadays prioritize the most when using assistants, the main ones are those related to getting information, listening to music and managing alerts.

​​Smart homes, a perfect use case for voice assistants

In the immediate future, there is one set of use cases on the rise: all those related to the control of smart home devices. 

The market offers more and more devices for the home that can be controlled by voice and from any point, such as room temperature, lighting, security, etc... What sounded almost like science fiction just a few years ago, by 2022 will be a routine part of our lives. 

This reality is what the company Simon perceived some time ago. This company is the head of a leading industrial group in the Spanish market specializing in technological solutions for lighting, light control, connectivity and electrical material for contract and residential projects.

Simon has a series of devices that, connected to its mobile app, make it possible to turn any home into a smart home. As Simon explains, 'In a smart home, your home adapts to your pace of life, not vice versa. That is to say, in a smart home, the main services and systems - lighting, shutter control... - are digitalized and can be controlled and adapted to what is needed at any given moment. Simon talks about the functionalities of smart devices as experiences. 
 

En este contexto, Simon detectó que necesitaba dar un salto más a nivel de la propia experiencia de usuario. Además, este cambio debía de estar orientado al uso de dispositivos inteligentes en el interior de las casas. Y, en este caso, ¿cuál podría ser el complemento perfecto al interruptor? Aquí es donde los asistentes de voz entran en juego. El objetivo de Simon era que cualquiera que tuviese algún dispositivo tipo Google Home o Alexa, pudiese controlar el ambiente de su casa con simples consultas de voz.

Y es por este motivo que Simon se puso en contacto con nosotros, para que desde emergya y con la colaboración de nuestro partner Secmotic, les ayudásemos a desarrollar la integración de su aplicación de control de dispositivos inteligente dentro de los dos servicios de voz más potentes y extendidos actualmente en el mercado: Google Home y Amazon Alexa.

The project to integrate the Simon app with Google Home and Alexa

The integration of the Simon mobile app with Google Home and Alexa has taken 6 weeks of work between both teams. The approach, as usual in our way of working, has been through the use of Agile Methodologies. 

At the beginning of the project, we had different Simon devices in the office. This matter allowed us to prepare the product deliveries that Simon would eventually make available to its customers.

A very frequent use case flow and asking for the lights in a specific room to be switched on:

This command is received and interpreted by Alexa and converted to a series of standardized commands - something like the ID of the device, which is a light bulb, that you want to turn on - sending the request to a Serverless Function. 

The function is where most of our work is. It is a translator of the standardized messages from Google Assistant or Alexa into the format supported by the device manufacturer's API. 

The device ID is stored as metadata and the facility in Simon's database for the Assistant. Therefore, the request can be formed correctly and it allows the necessary parameters to be added (in this example the value would be set to "on"). Then, it waits for the response from Simon to report back to Google Assistant or Alexa what the response has been. Thus, the Assistant responds to the user if everything went well or if there was a problem, in case the user was not in the room at the time and could not see the result with his own eyes.

Voice assistants: a way to join in

The case of Simon is a clear example of the enormous contribution that a voice assistant can make to the added value offered by a company to its customers. 

However, there are many other contexts in which voice will become the vehicle for connecting customers and businesses. According to Adobe Analytics, 71% of smartphone users use the voice assistant at least once a day, and 44% of them use it multiple times. 

Companies that have not yet embraced virtual assistants may be too late, but the curious thing is that they can still get on board with this technology. You just need to find the right supplier with experience and expertise in voice interface integration to join you and start walking the path together.