CASE STUDY
The Invisible Interface: Alexa Reads eldiario.es
Areas
Experience design. Investigación de usuario. Design Thinking. Innovación estratégica. Testing de conceptos. Orientación a outcomes e impacto
Voice interaction, or the invisible interface, is one of the greatest challenges in UX since the advent of the smartphone. A disruptive change in UX that opens up a vast range of new opportunities in our profession and compels us to a crucial reflection to analyze and understand how we speak with our devices. We present the new Alexa skill for eldiario.es.
We realized there was a way to make it easier to enjoy receiving daily news from one of our favorite news sources. We needed to create a new skill for eldiario.es. Something useful for us and for everyone else.
Our research began with user experience and the development of Amazon skills, including those developed for feed readers, RSS, and news, and of course, advances in voice assistant technology, voice user experience, and voice user interface: the invisible interface.
“Si queremos que esta nueva ola tecnológica satisfaga las altas expectativas de los usuarios, las empresas customer centric debemos poner el foco en este tipo de interacciones, aplicando los mismos principios de diseño intencional que usamos para las interfaces visuales. César Úbeda, Chief of Experience Officer, Runroom”
By using text-to-speech (TTS) sequences and audio streams, we can respond to customer queries, giving them the ability to talk to their devices and make them understand and act on what they are asking. A challenge in customer and user experience is whether we ask Alexa to "turn the page" or if we say "next page, please" or simply "next"?
Natural language processing has set the stage for a revolution in how we interact with technology to do more things, faster, easier, and for more people. This was a crucial factor in developing the skill.
We developed "the fearless question," meaning that key synonyms are set for recognition, allowing users to find and listen to their preferred content with ease.
The final product, the Alexa Skill for eldiario.es, includes the option to choose which category you want to listen to from eldiario.es, with an additional feature that allows adding preferred news to the morning routine. Additionally, the user has the option to request updated front-page news.
For more information about the invisible interface, listen to this episode of the podcast by Carlos Iglesias, CEO of Runroom:
E022 – Customer Experience with Voice Assistants, with Cris Santamarina
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