My Accent vs. The Virtual Assistant

I envy people who can speak to their virtual assistants just once and have them pick up precisely what they say. I just want to know, how does it feel to be designers' favorites?

My friends and I have this game where we use a word generator to generate random words and then try to get our virtual assistants to say the word by asking effective questions. You would think that this was an easy game but try having a West African accent. I say, "Hey Google, what are words starting with C?" and Google hears "Hey Google, what awards starting with C?" and gets confused. By the 3rd round, we were speaking to the Google Assistant in monosyllables so it could understand us. 

It concerns me to think that Virtual Assistants, which were literally designed to make my life a lot easier, end up stressing me even more. I speak great Nigerian English, and for the most part, everyone who understands English can understand me when I speak in English; not the Google Assistant, though. The Assistant and I are in a constant battle of who can wear the other out first. And this doesn't only apply to the Google Assistant; I've heard my friends try to speak to Siri, Alexa, and even Cortana. The results of these interactions are never too far off: constant repetition to the point that it becomes tiring.

The AI is supposed to be taught to comprehend different accents by processing data from many voices and understanding their intonation patterns but it has become apparent that "different accents" actually mean different American and European accents, which is why it struggles to navigate intonations and accents similar to mine.

Virtual Assistants need to be trained with more diversity at their center in order to understand a wider variety of African accents instead of having us repeat ourselves multiple times so the assistant understands us i.e. design with multiple user groups at the center instead of creating the product and trying to get diverse users to adapt to one experience. The companies behind these assistants should prioritize intentionality when designing these experiences in order to create more inclusive spaces.

I dream of living in a completely smart house, but I can't get there if the first step, a functioning voice-controlled assistant, can barely even understand me.