14 DAY TRIAL // Apple is out to hire a creative person to help the company “evolve and enrich Siri,” the virtual personal assistant originally introduced in iOS 5 with the iPhone 4S. The new Siri could make its way into iOS 7, or the iPhone 5S/iPhone 6.
Apple describes Siri as a witty pool of cultural knowledge, referring to the digital assistant as “she.” Siri has a “zeal to explain things in engaging, funny, and practical ways,” the Mac maker adds.
As such, for the next major upgrade to her abilities, Apple needs “someone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment,” according to the latest job posting on Apple’s site.
The new recruit will have excellent writing skills, great vocabulary and cross-cultural knowledge, and a demonstrated experience in writing character-driven dialog.
Candidates also need to present experience working with software engineering teams, and with user-centered design, if they want to stay ahead of the pack knocking on Apple’s door to nail the job.
The Cupertino giant also carefully points out that the successful candidate will “develop and write original dialog to support new Siri capabilities; refresh and refine existing Siri dialog.”
In other words, Apple is dead serious about evolving Siri into a much more powerful assistant for iOS 7 and beyond. Hopefully she’ll have a face too.
Other requirements are listed below.
• “Work closely with interaction designers in formulating utterances, and in specifying them and their parameters for engineering staff.
• Develop a rapid editorial process and workflow for eliciting ideas (from internal, external, and user sources), creating and refining dialog, soliciting internal reviews, getting dialog into production, and learning from user reaction to it.
• Ensure the consistency and quality of Siri dialog from all sources.
• Help the Siri team evolve Siri as a distinct, recognizable character.
• Co-lead a working group on cross-cultural / multi-language issues.”
Education-wise, candidates will need Bachelor’s or equivalent.
If tradition holds true this year as well, Apple will be readying a preview of iOS 7 for its annual developer conference, WWDC 2013.