Products · Broad category
Voice assistants
Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 10 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Assistant doesn't understand commands, forcing drivers to pull overUnreviewed
20142026- Voice assistant plays wrong music, forcing users to pull out their phone2026-08-18
- Voice assistant doesn't understand commands, forcing drivers to pull over or give up2024-11-05
- Users stray from pre-baked commands and voice assistants fail badly2024-11-02
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 10 complaints
- Voice assistant plays wrong music, forcing users to pull out their phone2026-08-18
- Mishears commands and immediately calls the wrong person without confirmation2025-09-09
- Voice commands force users to speak multiple brand names, making interactions clumsy2025-01-23
- Voice assistant doesn't understand commands, forcing drivers to pull over or give up2024-11-05
- Users stray from pre-baked commands and voice assistants fail badly2024-11-02
- Voice assistants fail to answer the commenter's questions2023-03-17
- Can't figure out how to play a sample of a voice2020-07-22
- Assistant misreads addresses and gives unclear confirmation, forcing users to double-check in apps2016-10-05
- Voice is slow and hard for larger workflows; no screen to track actions2015-08-04
- Must type contact names because voice misrecognises friends' names; reading pages requires manual highlighting2014-09-16