[tsurantino]

The initial example is broad, but can't this just be extended with additional questions? For example, can you tell me about dinner options that cost less than $20 per person. What are other people saying? How far away is this? It's questionable whether each of these follow up questions is actually that complex. I think you are arguing that things get hard if a user tries to put that together in one single complex query. Do people do that though?

I think the idea with a conversational interface is that it's succinct and on-demand. You receive the most relevant information directly in as simple of an interface as possible (arguably).

[viksit]

It's also extremely slow.

It's much faster for me to hit a few filters on things like prices and locations. Distance is just a simple ".2 miles away" text on the box, which shows an image and snippets of reviews. People are more and more visual.

I don't think a conversational interface _replaces_ a visual one.

It's that the initial query can be complicated, and it allows you to get into that 5-6 tier deep part of your search that you would have gotten to by using 5 filters and scrolling through 50 results.

[pbreit]

If you look at Amazon Echo, the stuff that works is pretty specific:

Set timer for 5 minutes

Add eggs to shopping list

Play Clocks by Coldplay

Weather

[shostack]

Don't have an Echo and have never ordered groceries so not sure how they solve this one, but taking the example of "Add eggs to shopping list"...how do they handle brand options with general queries like that? Are there brand options?

[vidarh]

I get groceries delivered weekly from Ocado in the UK, and they put together the weekly shopping list for us. Automatically.

They do so entirely based on past shopping history.

Currently the only annoyance is logging in once a week to check if there's any adjustments we'd like to make. But it's good enough that if I don't feel like it, I'll just take my chances (you can also add "always include X" and "never automatically add Y" rules, which is part of the reason why that works...) and most of the time I get what we need.

I never want to go back to putting together my own shopping list from scratch.

This is how I want these type of services to work. I don't want to have to talk to them. 99% of the time, I'd prefer them to be invisible to me, and make things that used to be an annoyance just disappear.

But the one way it could be better would be to make that one last interaction disappear more often: Not having to log in to make changes. Being able to just say out in the air that I want to add eggs, would be great, and in that case I'd want it added based on past preferences: If I've bought eggs before, and I'm not specifying, just add the quantity and brand I usually order. If an alternative I've also ordered is cheaper or on offer, ask for confirmation if I'd be happy with that instead. If I haven't bought eggs before, pick a brand based on my past overall purchase history, and ask for confirmation, or simply add some - if I'm asking to "add eggs" rather than "please recommend me some eggs for my grocery shopping", I probably don't care.

[pbreit]

Sorry for any confusion. There's not a purchase. It's just a plain old shopping list.

[goldfeld]

For Amazon I guess it would be trivial to choose based on what you tend to buy.