How to get to the “valley of amazement”? Remember Ivona's synthesizer and her artificial, neutral tone? She wouldn't release a platinum record even if she covered The Beatles, because listening to it was just tiring. And why? Because interacting with artificial intelligence that does not imitate a person very well is not pleasant, and that is when you fall into a valley of amazement, or rather incredible discomfort (as confirmed by research). So you have to be very careful when implementing such innovations, because the border between the “valley of amazement” and the actual awesomeness is like the difference between chocolate and a chocolate-like product.
What do you think, dear Watson?
Artificial intelligence is slowly spreading in the world of e-commerce projects, as in its natural environment. One of the few examples is the robot, or rather the IBM Watson bot, which was “hired” by the manufacturer of mountain clothing North Face. We look into the store for a jacket — we don't have to search through different categories or load selection filters — Watson immediately asks us a simple question with relevance that Sherlock himself would not be ashamed of, which is “where and when will you use this jacket?” Later, Watson, following the traces of our answers to his questions, leads us to a catalog with jackets perfectly chosen for us. Try it yourself on the site North Face.
A pinch of traditional store in the online
When we enter a traditional store, a freight forwarder approaches us, asks what we are looking for or help with something. And when we go out she wishes you a nice day and smiles happily. Meanwhile, in e-commerce we are usually left to ourselves — we enter the store, we look around, we take what we want from the shelves, we go where we want. It would seem that this is what it is about - no one is standing over our heads, we browse, we put in the basket, we pay. But the hybrid of the offline and online world, that is, our own assistant or at least “something” that talks to us fills the gap after contact with a real person. Even if this man would not enter the correct CAPTCHA characters.
