Daniel Houghton: Chapter 2: The ways person-centric tech makes everyone’s lives better

The thing that I have found, and this is kind of a small sample, 10 or 12 companies, I've never met one that was like, "We have our data shit together." Not one. By the way, like, sorting all that shit out was really difficult.

It's Machine Yearning from Assist. We spend our time here thinking, dreaming, and asking questions about the future of AI, the talking internet, and how we're reshaping our culture. You wouldn't think paper guidebooks, the repositioning of a travel brand, and the future of digital creative agencies would be machine learning territory, but they are when the meeting point is Daniel Houghton. Daniel is the CEO of PYXL, that's P-Y-X-L, a Nashville-based digital marketing agency. For years, Daniel has operated right up at the edge of digital content design, build, and measurement. Before joining PYXL this year, Daniel was CEO of Lonely Planet. Under his leadership, Lonely Planet made Fast Company's 2018 Most Innovative Companies list, and he was a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30. Now Daniel is on the agency side with Pixel and diving into a new set of challenges as a leader, digital strategist, and student of culture. When Shane from Assist sat down with Daniel, the news of his job move had just broken, and this was his first interview as Pixel CEO. This is machine learning though, so this isn't the typical arms-crossed looking manly on the magazine cover CEO interview. Hang out and enjoy. Here's Shane and Daniel.

Take me to Google Home, Alexa, Siri. Do you use them all?

I have used Alexa, but I don't use that like as part of my daily routine. I would say I use Google Home the most, Google Assistant, but only through my speakers. I don't use really the app on my phone. If I'm on my phone or my watch, I'm using Siri.

And do you like voice?

Yeah, when it gets it right.

How often does that happen?

If I'm talking into my watch, it happens every time. If I'm talking to my phone, it never works.

Why is that?

I mean, I assume that it must be a hardware thing. I don't— I mean, I'm not really getting any closer to it. I feel like when we all talk to Siri, we like jam it into our face and she's still like, I haven't ordered any pizza for you yet today. Thanks. Okay. I was asking about if the lights were off, but thank you for that. Whereas if you say to your watch like, hey Siri, text Shane and tell him that like I'm on my way but I'll be a couple minutes late. Yeah, that works. It like somehow just writes that perfectly and then it also knows the difference between what you wanted the message to be and what you were just talking to it about. Every time it gets it right. I don't know how it does that because I know it's sending it back to the phone, but it's something with the hardware. It has to be.

And what is the use case you use it for the most? Because you have one of the most IoT homes I've ever seen, and which is where we're sitting right now in your dining room. Do— is that the best use case? Is that it unlocks your doors, it turns on your lights, it sets it to night mode? Like, is that your number one use case?

Yeah, and I, in some sense, I haven't really spent enough time to hook them all together and automate them like I could have, because I know that I could set it up in the Home app and say, "Hey Siri, I'm going to bed," and it would turn off the lights, change the temperature on the thermostat, lock my doors, and all that kind of stuff. In reality, I sort of end up kind of glancing down at my watch or different things to see, make sure my doors are locked, and then when I'm ready to go to bed, I just say to Google, like, "Good night," and it just handles the rest. And it just, it just makes sure all the lights are off and stuff like that. It's not so much about voice necessarily, although I think it's going to be. It's more about the fact that like, if I run off, you know, on a business trip for a couple days and realize I left all my lights on, I can just turn my Philips Hue lights off from my phone. It's just nice to kind of see the status of all that stuff. So.

Status, status is a popular one. What are other use cases? That could be taken to voice that you think would be really powerful for status?

In theory, I've got CarPlay in my car. I get in the car, drive down the road, and Siri interrupts me and is like, hey, keep your eyes on the road, I know you're driving. Did you know you left your front door unlocked? It knows that. And then you're like, shit, I gotta turn around, or I need to pull over, or, or Or let's go better, would you like me to lock those doors for you? Yes. Ding, locked. That's what it should be and we're not there. I think we will get there though.

What else are you excited about when you think of voice messaging bots use cases? 'Cause you're a consumer-centric brand person. What are the use cases you dream about?

Efficiency and talking directly to a customer. Like the ability to sort through whatever the issues are very, very quickly. And I'm not talking about like, say, one for customer service. I'm talking about like your messaging on your phone, and it can immediately, in like 3 to 5 questions, route you to the exact person. So you don't have to hit some operator, like all that kind of stuff. If you have an issue with something, to just go— it doesn't matter if you're trying to buy tickets to a concert and I'm in the Ticketmaster app and I've seen the seat map. It's really hard to tell. Like, I just want something like within 75 feet and I don't have more than $300. Can you do like— boom. And for them to like route you to the right person to do that, or the right ticket, or the right ticket, or whatever it is. Doesn't have to be a person. But I feel like, at least for me, I don't really reach out to a company or a brand or anything unless I feel like I've tried it all myself and I just can't figure it out. And I— at that point, I just want to talk to a person. Because everything else, like check packages on Amazon, you go see exactly the status.

Like, you don't really need to ever call, but you still do have to log in to get that status.

True.

Do you think one of the benefits of the new voice and messaging space is that it's inside the most used app on your phone, messaging?

Yeah, I think if it, if it evolves the way I think we all hope that it will, I think that's absolutely— yeah. It just takes away so much other, like, here's another app and another login and another thing I have to go into 1Password for to get my— like, it just doesn't matter how many times you log in, it's always fucking logged out every time. And the—

every non-optimized mobile website to log in is just painful.

Well, you just give up and leave like 90% of people do, just like, nah, no. A lot of people just get in the car and try to go find a store. They're just like, I'm not even doing this. This was supposed to be easy home shopping. It's terrible.

Take the last use case for what you dream about voice to something that's very, very specific to you, which is flying. You're a loyal Delta customer. Yep, always have been. And if you could wave a magic wand and you're sitting there designing the perfect consumer use case in messaging and voice for yourself, what are the 3 or 4 areas that you still find friction in that you would love to see solved by Delta?

That's hard. Delta takes such good care of me, and I'm not even bragging. Like, I'm, I'm part of this 360 program that I can get someone on the phone in less than a minute every time.

So take that and say, I have the best experience in the world. How can, with AI, automation, and machine learning, or messaging, voice, whatever, all these buzzwords that I just said, how can you help teach them how you can give that service to every single Delta customer?

There should be a lot of ways that that could happen.

Or what do you get as 360 that if you had an AI assistant to do it, you could give to everybody?

Yeah, in fact, even with the status that I have, there's still a couple things that I don't know any airline that gets right. Like, you know, whenever you— it doesn't have to be Delta, pick whoever, whatever airline— that you have an app, right? You're going to open the app, it still doesn't know what gate you're arriving at. It still can't tell you where their next gate is. And I, I could literally be like idiot abroad here, but I walk out of every flight, and I have a lot of connecting flights because I go through Atlanta a lot, and I get out and I still have to go look at the freaking board to see where is my Nashville flying. It's not in the app, and I— and I— there's some problem there where like they're changing all that stuff on the fly, and— but you would think that if it's on that board in there, it could be like, just ping me, boom, and it's still in FlyScanner.

And I'm still also getting a text message about a change, but it's not in the app because it's disconnected systems.

It's That's literally a real-life example of what we were talking about earlier. And I could call them and be like, "What gate is this going out of?" But I'm not trying to bother them over something so stupid. I'll figure it out. But the proactive, like, "Here's some information we knew you were about to ask for because by definition, to continue to use our product, you're going to need to know this." Don't make me walk out and like go find the sign while I get trampled by everyone else getting off the plane. I still don't know an airline that's fixed that, and I've tried every— and it's just, there's something with some system in all the airports because Delta doesn't get to control it end to end, right? They're in someone else's airport, and it's just one of those problems that's really annoying. They figured out with the bags because they do control that, so they can tell you exactly where your checked bag is. Is it on the ramp? Is it on the way to the carousel? It's a carousel 7. Somehow in the last couple years they figured that out. Which is really impressive.

Where does it show up? Where does Carousel 7 show up? Because I have this problem every single time I get to an airport.

I can't find the bags. You need to fly Delta. Yeah, I've seen people use it, like sitting next to me, and I used it and it was magnificent. And it's in the app.

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