NPR One for Amazon Alexa

Interaction Design, UX Research, Voice-UI Design

Objective

NPR wanted to bring its personalized NPR One multiplatform experience to Amazon’s suite of smart home assistants. The goal was to craft a voice interaction experience that was easy to use and remember and allowed users to access the most useful features of NPR One.

User Research

With user testing and feedback gathered from NPR’s user community, I uncovered insights into user behaviors and motivations. I then created a set of assumptions to check in subsequent testing. User testing also informed the organization about the features that users would find most useful on voice-UI platforms: the ability to receive newscasts, favorite programs, and podcast recommendations on demand.

UX Strategy & Vision

I created wireframes and VUI flows to share the vision, design principles and strategy. I evangelized user goals and balanced them with business goals to aid decision making.

Interaction Design

My focus was on allowing easy-to-remember pathways to the features users told us were most valuable. Users can access the latest newscasts immediately through the command “Alexa, ask NPR One to play the latest news.” Users can also ask for the latest episode of their favorite shows by saying “Alexa, ask NPR One to play Fresh Air.” Users can also receive personalized recommendations by saying “Alexa, ask NPR One to recommend a podcast.”

NPR One for Alexa - VUI flows: playing a show
NPR One for Alexa – VUI flows: playing a show
NPR One for Alexa - VUI flows: getting a recommendation, finding out what is playing
NPR One for Alexa – VUI flows: getting a recommendation, finding out what is playing

NPR One for Amazon Alexa launched February 2017