
Amazon Echo - SNL
About this video
A Saturday Night Live sketch for the Amazon Echo Silver, a smart speaker for the elderly, in which older users misunderstand Alexa. It parodies voice assistants.
Why it appears in the archive
HN brings it up as a joke and as design inspiration for voice assistants for seniors.
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From the Hacker News discussion
I'd be interested to see how older people interacted with the device. I know someone who got their parent a device and they kept "Alexa" written on a post-it because they couldn't remember the device name. It's a big shift in technology, but since it is voice interactive, rather than computer/smart phone, I think it does provide an ease of use for older people who might not be as technology savvy. SNL did a great skit on this … [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗Did you see the recent SNL skit? I think that a real Alexa for Seniors would incorporate some of what this spoof Alexa does. [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗But a leader in what exactly? I have been looking for years for actual usage stats. E.g., MAU and UAM for VR headsets, especially ones broken out by length of ownership. I get that people are buying Oculus units because of the hype, but is there much sustained usage? If so, what exactly is keeping people engaged once the novelty wears off? As comparison, look at Amazon's smart speakers. $10 billion spent, lots of hype, part of the zeitgeist enough that SNL is doing jokes about it [1]. End of the day it's a "colossal failure": [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗No - it is just about age. HN readers are younger thus they think they know more. Old people will just say: "I don't know about that" [1] [1] [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗> “He yells and mumbles too much,” Don wrote. “And doesn’t ask complete questions.” Literally this SNL skit: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗