The Amazon Echo Show 10 automatically moves its display to face the user, even if it is performing a task that doesn't need user input, like showing a recipe on the screen. Get weekly insights into the ways companies optimize data, technology and design to drive success with their customers and employees. Proactive or not, features in smart-home devices need to address a real user need, not stack the product with unnecessary and potentially confusing tools, said Ashton Udall, senior product manager at Google. The company developed sensor technology to monitor sleep, for example, because its research showed that consumers frequently forget to use or charge the wearables often employed for sleep tracking, or find the devices uncomfortable, he said. Amazon and Google hope the experiences will help them compete for users and more fully integrate their devices into people's lives.

Plexiglass and human "traffic monitors" will go only so far to ease concerns of both consumers and employees about in-person banking while the COVID pandemic continues. Financial institutions are realizing that long-term adjustments will be required in how retail banking is conducted. This dramatic shift has sharply increased interest in various types of conversational banking, especially as a means to ease the pressure on call centers. Most often, conversational banking takes the form of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence. But it also includes voice-activated digital assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, used with a variety of devices including mobile phones and smart speakers.

Weekday afternoons, millions of Americans -- many stuck in rush-hour traffic -- learn the business news of the day from Kai Ryssdal, a former Navy pilot and host of the public radio show Marketplace. "I spend almost as much time with Kai Ryssdal as I do with my own husband," joked Sally Kilbridge of Scottsdale, Ariz., who toughs out her more than two-hour-a-day commute by listening to public radio. Marketplace, which is produced in downtown Los Angeles by American Public Media, is the most popular business program broadcast in the U.S., with an average of 14.6 million listeners a week. In the last year, the 28-year-old program has seen its audience grow 16% -- benefiting from Americans' increased appetite for news. Hoping to capitalize on its success, Marketplace has launched an ambitious plan to remain a vital source for economic information as consumers' listening habits change, putting a strain the traditional broadcast model.