A Bit of Q
After jumping through many hoops, I was finally able to test out Amazon Q.
It reminded me a bit of the scene in Robot Chicken in which Gargamel finally captures and cooks the Smurfs, only to be disappointment with their taste and orders takeout. Q likely offers capabilities way beyond what I was testing, but my initial interaction was anchored with my experience using ChatGPT.
I tried loading a document for comments, tried to paste in passages to glean insights, tried to ask it the number of R’s in “strawberry”… it didn’t even try. It mumbled something about outside it’s domain of capabilities. Could it create images? No.
I wasn’t using Q for coding. I was trying to use it for everyday research and formatting tasks that involved data way to sensitive to post in a ChatGPT chat. In the end, what I could get it to do was extract emails from a list of text, which saved a minute or two of formatting… queue sound of slow clap in an empty auditorium.
While I know I could mold Q to my liking, the first impression left me disappointed. How much we’re influenced by first impressions! While I’ll continue to come back to it to test, my biggest lesson was a reminder of the importance of planning the out-of-the-box experience for products.
