Mycroft Timer Critique from "the field"

Yesterday I was working on a new skill with Mycroft and cooking dinner for the family. I was quite focused on the code and didn’t want to ruin dinner, so I thought, let’s ask Mycroft to set a timer. It worked, dinner was great, and I tweeted about it and got this response:

“Looks delicious Greg! Is there anything that you would have liked Mycroft to do differently or better with timers?”

  1. Yes, it was . . . roasted cornish hen, asparagus and sweet potatoes!
  2. Yes, “Hey Mycroft, Can you do the dishes?” :):rofl:
  3. Serious critique:
    a. I didn’t look up the skill before I used it, I just asked “Hey Mycroft, set a timer for 30 minutes” and it worked! Now to me that defines a truly useful voice skill, “no thinking” on the part of the user. It just responded to a very “natural” voice command and did what I wanted.
    b. about halfway through I did a sudo reboot, I was coding afterall. . . after issuing the command, I thought, oh crap, will I lose the timer??? Where was I with the hens? . . .NO problem, Mycroft maintained this timer despite the reboot. So if it was designed to do this, super! Dinner saved!
    c. It would be nice to give a name or description to the timers …
    “Hey Mycroft, set a timer for for 30 minutes to change the oven temp”
    “Hey Mycroft, set the|an oven timer for 1 hour and a timer|reminder to|for pick up kids in 3 2 hours”
    d. very minor critique, when the Timer is set, it says, “A timer has been set for 24 minutes and 59 seconds.” For most non techie types, it is my opinion to that a response “A timer has been set for 25 minutes” would be sufficient.

Bottom line, the skill worked great and did the job without looking at a manual of the README file! Now about those dishes . . .

Hope this helps

Greg

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I’m so very happy it didn’t burn your dinner!

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