AMAZON · 2020
Alexa Video
A 5-day design sprint focused on customer awareness and engagement with video on multimodal devices.
Techniques
GV 5-day Design Sprint.
My Role
Lead Product Designer.
Goal
Create a new place for customers to vocally discover inspiring and relevant videos while multitasking.
Tools Used
Sketch, Invision, Principle, Keynotes, Pen and paper
Devices
All Echo Show Models
Background
Echo show devices have been on the market for over two years. In those two years our growth has plateaued. Of the customers engaging with Alexa Video, only half actively engage on a monthly basis. There are a few reasons why customers are not engaged with video:
First, there is a lack awareness of video on multimodal devices. There is no indication that the customer can play videos from the home screen except for the discovery panel. The discovery panel video shortcut drops customers into Prime Video, which limits the discovery of other providers.
Second, when customers do engage, they only see Prime Video, Hulu and NBC. In general, low customer engagement discourages large providers (like Netflix and YouTube) from on-boarding their services onto Alexa Video; so even though we have data that our customers want to see more providers, we are unable to satisfy that need.
The final reason there is low engagement is that the existing CX is broken and not bar raising. The current VUI is incomplete and doesn’t cover every user scenario or edge-case. It’s hard to browse and discover new content, leading customers to watch the same content they watch on their tv.
The Sprint Goal
Create a new place for customers to automatically discover inspiring and relevant videos while multitasking.
Day 1: Map
Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, we’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, we’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, we’ll ask the experts at our company to share what they know.
Day 2: Sketch
Tuesday is about turning abstract ideas into concrete concepts. First, each sprinter will participate in lightning demos (quick research of solutions/features outside your company that are inspirational), then we’ll divide or swarm based on the target area(s) from Day 1. We’ll sketch alone using a 4 step process, and get ready for the Sticky Decision Wednesday morning.
Day 3: Decide
Wednesday kicks off with the Sticky Decision. This is where our deciders once again weigh in. This time, they choose what we’ll storyboard, build, and test. After the decision is made, the rest of the day is spent storyboarding the prototype we’ll build Thursday and test Friday. These are the winning solutions:
Day 4: Prototype
On Thursday, we’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a prototype. Creating a lean prototype will allow us to validate and learn with real customers. On Thursday, we’ll also make sure everything is ready for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and writing an interview script.
Prototype 1: Morning Scenario
We asked customers to imagine they were getting ready for work and drinking coffee that morning. On the home screen of the Echo Show there are three tiles: the first tile is a calendar with upcoming events, the largest tile is personal photos, and the last tile is live TV. We learned from previous studies that in the morning customers are busy and want to stay up to date with short form content. Another study also showed customers interest in live tv, which is why we chose to use live news on the third tile.
As the tile auto-plays the live news, the closed captioning is on within sight of the customer. The customer can then tap the tile to watch the live tv in fullscreen with sound. To see what other channels or content is available the customer taps the screen and swipes up. The live TV continues playing in a minimized format with three tiles providing other content that is valuable to the customer based on their usage and patterns. For example, in this scenario above, the customer follows the Seahawks closely, while their child enjoys the show Captain Underpants.
Prototype 2: Evening Scenario
In the evening scenario we asked the customers to imagine they are coming home from work. An ambient slow motion video plays in fullscreen. When the customer walks up to the screen the Echo Show senses the customer then suggests video content for the evening. The suggestions are based on the customers watch habits and preferences based on Visual ID detection using the device bulit-in camera.
The first of the three tiles is a curated playlist of late show short form videos, the second tile is live news and the third is an episodic food show. Below that is a hint action button that says discover more, it is both a voice hint as well as a direct ingress into video home.
The customer selects the first tile and that would take them into the video playlist where they can watch late night laughs on autoplay to play in the background while cooking dinner. If the customer selects discover more, because they were looking for different content, they go to video home. Video home in this CX includes many playlists of different topics, trending or recommended. As the customer scrolls down the page they can all check out what channels are live as well as dive deeper into their streaming providers.
Day 5: Test
Friday is testing and observing, taking notes, and learning.
Key Findings
- Discovery of other features, such as recipes or music video, seem to be a “gateway” to customers realizing they can ask for videos on Echo Show.
- No navigation guidance to shows they can watch on the device. One participant was unhappy that Alexa does not understand his grandson’s voice requests.
- Lack of awareness is an issue with video on the Show. Three participants mentioned they didn’t know how to get TV content to play on the Show, and one person said that if he knew how to, that would incent him to do more video with Show.
- Short-form content is desired. Customers want watch live TV on their Show, because they see it as a good alternative to having to turn on a big screen TV. One participant said he’d like it if the live TV just started playing when he walked by his device.
What we've learnt in the 5-day sprint...
The sprint has validated our hypothesis and provided us with feedback that video is desirable on multimodal devices. It provided us with key insights on how we should continue to improve awareness and engagement for video consumption on a device that doesn’t live in the same context as a TV.
We also understood that random feature discovery can be helpful at times, however, we recognize that our customers want to discover content and features in a more relatable manner, especially for video. As such, we will prioritize more contextually relevant content and feature discovery, and build on familiarity using common standards.