Background

Insight

By 2014 all smart phones operated in the reactive space, responding to commands, but never taking any initiative. They were very capable, but not remotely intelligent. Intel developed an intelligent assistant that not only could react to explicit requests, but also interpreted implicit opportunities, and took proactive action.

The Challenge

Create a platform to leverage :

• Behavioral awareness (what): Understands your past actions to predict future needs.
• Contextual intelligence (when): Remains aware of the tasks at hand, plus social and environmental conditions.
• Proactive assistance (how): Intuits how to best aid the user by assessing benefit and urgency.

What Alfred did

He created a platform where Tasks/Events were presented as the user’s journey progressed. The user could always “scroll back” to revisit or take action on past items.

“Call to action” items could be just ignored and they “scroll away” if no action needed (like a friend just checking in) others would be requiring attention until proper action is taken (like pay your bill)

A different visual treatment/alert mode helps the user to prioritize what is relevant and what is not.

Items requiring action display a smart “One touch only” button showing a suggested action.    

Taping on the item displays an expanded item view with more options available

A “Call to agent” button is always present, disappearing only when needed (scrolling, media playing, etc.)

By tapping on it the user can use voice, text, or images to interact with the agent.

The Outcome

Although the project created a lot of expectation and was welcomed with great excitement it did not move to the production phase.

‍