2016 Tech Impact Awards: User Interface

WINNER:
Amazon.com
Seattle | Employees: 245,200 (worldwide)
It might be called Echo, but its voice is named Alexa. The smooth-talking avatar not only makes Amazons innovative web-connected, cylinder-shaped speaker easy to control, she even tells jokes. And whats especially impressive about Alexa is her ability to understand voice commands from speakers with varying accents. The original inspiration for the Echo, says Toni Reid, director of product for Amazon Echo devices and Alexa, was the computer in Star Trek. We wanted to create a computer in the cloud thats controlled entirely by your voice. You could ask it things, ask it to do things for you, find things for you and its easy to converse with in a natural way, says Reid. Were a ways off from that, but that was our vision. While Alexa cant compose a symphony for you or brew you a pot of tea, Earl Grey, you can tell her to not only play Beethovens Ninth Symphony, you can also tell her to set timers, add items to your shopping list, recite biographical information about Abraham Lincoln or reorder items youve bought on Amazon.com. If you have certain connected smart home devices, you can also use Alexa to turn the lights on or off. Alexas voice-recognition system, already regarded by many as superior to Apples Siri system, will continue to improve as usage expands. Reid says tens of thousands of developers are building skills for Alexa to allow customers to order things like an Uber pickup or Dominos delivery.

SILVER AWARD:
Skype Translator
Location: Redmond | Employees: N/A
Since its preview launch last year, Microsofts real-time language translator for Skype has gotten many tongues wagging with comparisons to Star Trek. The ability to converse in any of seven different languages English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Portuguese and Spanish with immediate voice-to-voice translation is an impressive innovation, and the recent addition of Arabic shrinks global gaps even more. Even more interchange is possible by instant message, with 50 languages supported. Can Klingon be far behind?