Dear Apple:
I know that you are constantly getting flack from people about problems with Siri, and I’d like to offer a solution. You were recently under fire for having human reviewers listen to snippets of anonymized recordings to help improve the service. You’ve promised to give us a way to opt into helping you improve Siri.
I’d like to suggest a very simple and effective opt-in method for you to collect the data you need to improve Siri and nothing more.
For all users who have opted in, you would do the following. After every single invocation of Siri, you would listen to the five seconds right after Siri responds. If at that point, the user says any of the things I have listed below, you would then save for analysis whatever the person said that caused Siri to be invoked, what Siri heard, and what Siri responded. Here are the statements to listen for after Siri responds to us:
- Siri, you’re a moron (or idiot)
- I wasn’t talking to you, Siri
- That’s not what I asked, Siri
- Why are you talking to me, Siri?
- Any expletives in any language
This may not be an inclusive list but with just these few phrases as triggers to analyze what happened, I am convinced you would be able to harvest a vast treasure trove of examples of where Siri did not meet our expectations.
No need to thank me,
Allison