I have been jazzed about Microsoft Cortana since I first starting hearing about the development process--leveraging real personal assistants' experiences to develop an electronic digital assistant to get me through my day.
In an online discussion about product innovation, I was intrigued to hear one of the Microsoft development team describe the relationship between Theodore and Samantha in the movie "Her" as an idealized design goal for Cortana. I find that movie unsettling on almost every level, but the idea that you should try to develop a digital assistant that people could like rings true to me. I still miss asking Wildfire (a 1990's era digital assistant) "What does a cow say?" just to hear her say "Mooo" and make me laugh.
Cortana's notebook--the record of my preferences that drives the initial context of responses--is somewhat simple today. I expect that complexity to grow as the software evolves and I ask Cortana to do more things. Today she knows that I prefer to follow business and local news, that I like the Houston Astros and Washington Redskins, that I like to hear about weather, traffic, and news when I wake up in the morning, and to track a few stocks in my portfolio.
I have yet to have an "aha moment" where Coratana reminds me to leave early because of bad traffic, but she has reminded me to buy Glucosomine when I was at Costco. I have opened Cortana's notebook and can see the basic information she knows about me. Unfortunately, when I ask Cortana to edit her notebook, she defaults to a Web search showing me how to do it by hand.
I see great potential here and have had fun playing with Cortana. In fact too much fun, I dropped my Lumia 1020 while I was road testing Cortana and cracked my screen! I have been using my phone a lot more in the last week. My kids still think that Siri is just as good, and for simple web searches I agree with them--I don't see a big difference. But the ability to get Cortana to tell me the things I need to know when I want to know them is quite powerful.
I like and used Cortana so much, I dropped my phone and cracked my screen!
First and foremost, the speech recognition seems really good, so a foundation technology is providing fewer roadblocks. Cortana has successfully helped me:
• Tune the rear derailleur on my bike--I had to type out derailleur for her to complete a web search
• Wake me up on-time, showing me the latest schedule for the Houston Astros, top headlines, and the weather
• Call a variety of contacts remarkably well given the jumble of Windows, Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, LinkedIn and Facebook contacts that are all resident on my phone
• Find directions (even opening Waze to do it!) as I was traveling
• Remind me to wake up my daughter for her babysitting job at 8 AM, and what's on the shopping list when I get to Costco
• She even told me a great clean joke that I could use to open a presentation (had not heard it! "The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar--it was tense.") and she seems to have more where that came from.
Cortana has not been successful on a few other things:
• Combining or editing contacts--some repetitive tasks, like de-duping contacts, would be useful
• Pairing with a new Bluetooth device--although I can turn Bluetooth on/off and connect to an already paired device.
• She would not enable/disable group messaging, but did complete a Web search reminding me where the option was
Initially, I could also not get Cortana to access Uber on my phone, instead opening AT&T Locker, or PDF reader repeatedly--even when she understood Uber, it did not work. I turns out, I had the Uber web page pinned to my start screen, and had not downloaded the app. As soon as I asked Cortana to "download Uber app," she did and then it worked fine. Cortana heard "Open Hoover" and still opened Uber!
Cortana does default to a web search more frequently than I thought (She does work in the Bing group at Microsoft, right?), and she rarely speaks to me. These leave me feel more like I have a really smart computer than a personal assistant--not what I was going for. When defaulting to a Web search, Cortana goes away and leaves it to Bing, Explorer and a keyboard--I'd prefer to be able to follow up with Cortana, although I do not miss the bad speech recognition experiences so common on other phones that end with me speaking irrationally to an inanimate object.
It is so easy to use and carry around Cortana, so I find myself reaching for my phone more frequently. When I do, I have been pleasantly surprised more often than disappointed. Cortana runs well, and has put some data that I like to see frequently on her live tile. I moved her to the top of my home screen and enlarged her as a thank-you. I hope she appreciates it.
It is still unclear when exactly AT&T is going to officially deliver WindowsPhone 8.1 and Cortana to my Lumia 1020. No one in the AT&T store or at 611 has been able to offer even a hint of a schedule, but for the rest of you Windows Phone users, I hope it is soon. I think you're going to like it!
