This Slack discussion by Sadia Mehmood, ronak (GraphCMS), Oliver N and kira leigh occurred in slogging's official #introductions channel, and has been edited for readability.
Sadia Mehmood
Voice search technology: Yay or nay? Why and why not? ronak (GraphCMS)
Depends on the use case tbh - if its for directions/menus/support/instructions sure. If its just "because we have to on the off chance you might ask Alexa to find you a red pair of shoes", probably not. ronak (GraphCMS)
There's also several advantages for people with injuries or other physical limitations to benefit from voice search Oliver N
Yay. I mostly search on my smart TV using voice. It's way much faster than typing using the remote controller. kira leigh
Definitely a 'yay' for accessibility, as Ronak mentioned, but it has the potential to be misused. It's not highly new technology, but it's in its infancy enough that there are security concerns. If there are devices that listen to conversations, there are people [bad actors] who want to listen to them. I'm in favor of technology that offers people other ways to interact with world. But with anything, there comes a risk, and technology businesses need to be aware that voice is a privacy concern, also. 'Yay' but cautious, and always thinking about user safety. Sadia Mehmood
For me, it's a bit of both. I don't usually use voice search but I do agree with Oliver N I think the feature can be pretty handy because customers now a days are looking for instant and relevant search results. Therefore, voice search is perfectly capable of providing just that.