This morning I had a talk with a real estate website.
Ok. It wasn’t exactly a heady discourse, but it was pretty neat nonetheless:
Earlier this year, I had written a post wondering which portal would implement speech recognition first. Trulia seems to have won the race.
The voice recognition is pretty rudimentary really but overall fairly accurate. I could trip it up if I wanted to, but if I spoke clearly Trulia reliably returned the location I was looking for.
It began to feel pretty natural after a few minutes of testing. Far quicker and faster than typing. And as I used it more, I actually began to feel myself getting frustrated by its limitations too. This was a good thing.
I wanted to execute my whole search by speech – not just the location.
Look who’s talking
I get the limitations around speech – busy offices, noisy environments, etc. But for many simple searches conducted at home it’s perfectly acceptable. (I did, however, get a few sideways glances from my wife as I was talking to my computer.)
In fact, I might go as far as to say that once you get used to it, it begins to feel like a better way to conduct this type of query. “Real life” home search is all about asking questions, so services like Apple’s Siri and Trulia’s voice search may, in time, become the norm, not the exception.
It all reminds me of this scene from Star Trek IV – a classic, but perhaps just a little clairvoyant too:
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I find voice recognition for search less helpful on the computer than on the phone… mainly because I type really fast and, as you say, old habits die hard. Implementing this on mobile, however, would be a major win. Much easier to click on the mic than type in “Denver Colorado” on my iPhone.
My results were also not as clean. When I click on the icon it indeed recognized my search “grafton west vriginia” but it placed it after the search cue text. I’m using Chrome 16.0.912.41 beta on a mac. I can’t make it NOT do what it’s doing for me, it doesn’t matter where I leave my cursor.
Here’s a video of my results for your edification: http://youtu.be/qXPFkrT6EZQ
Joel- Thanks for checking out the feature… I snuck this in during our last innovation day here at Trulia!
Jeff – Thanks for recording that issue you’re seeing. I’ll check out the beta version of Chrome and see about fixing that.
Nice technology, but if the quality of the listing repository is poor, does it really matter?
I am continuously exasperated that sites based on syndicated listings are allowed to get a free pass from the public and the RE net to provide a repository of listings of such poor quality.
Here’s the innovation that I would like to see. Prominently display a performance index that tells the consumer the quality of the data that has been presented. So, I’ll do a search, and if 20% of available listings are missing, and if 20% of the current listings shown as active are actually sold, then I would see a rating of 60% accuracy for that search. As a consumer, this would be a meaningful innovation.
I think adding auto complete would be more useful. Except for mobile when it’s a mobile browser then voice looks good.
[...] will remain unmoved. Not even, of course, how we search for homes. We’re seeing the signs [...]
Today’s voice activated search is rudimentary, but some day I see the opportunity for the first client interaction… The narrowing of the search…. to be interactive. To the point, of asking west Alamo or Roundhill is something any skilled computer could do, but knowing if “Mary” on Pine street would sell for the right price, that is human. A very exciting times for real estate professionals.
[...] in real estate are just starting to scratch the surface. Trulia recently integrated voice search into their product, for [...]