Fanta Fear

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Context

I worked with Coca-Cola México for a voice interface project. This was the first time that I’ve faced such a challenge in my career, because up to this point I’ve had designed quite a lot of visual interfaces for many technologies and form factors, but it was the first time that I’ve had to design a non-visual interface.

The client wanted to build a halloween skill for Alexa devices that would tell an interactive story in which the users would be able to select their own paths at different points in time. In the story, there was a group of people at a halloween party and spooky things started to happen, so the user would be able to follow any character in some sort of choose-your-own-adventure style.

Challenges

This was a big challenge for me as a designer. I needed to define, map and give visibility to all the things that would happen during the experience:

• Map the entire story
• Define time stamps of all the points in which the user is able to interact
• Define the points in which the story has cross paths with other characters
• Define the moments in time in which smart appliances can be triggered
• Define the logic so the user could go back and forth in the story

Actions

As soon as the project started, I defined the following design process:

I facilitated stakeholders interviews and was able to create proto-personas and scenarios for this Alexa skill. I didn’t have access to users or potential users, so I had to design based on business requirements and online research about other similar experiences.

For the conversational artifact, I created a brand new kind of diagram based on Interaction Flows that I usually design for visual interfaces. I adapted it so it could reflect all the things that could happen during the experience, including the script, smart appliances, time stamps and potential paths that the user could choose at particular points of the story.

Impact

The conversational artifact was key for the success of this project, not only for me as a designer, but this had value for development and even for stakeholders. Since this diagram gave visibility to everyone, stakeholders were able to quickly point some inconsistencies with their assets and we were able to correct them before they were built with code, so when the first version was released, there weren’t many urgent bugs to fix and the project was delivered on time, with the expected quality

The client was extremely happy with the result. The skill was published in the Alexa store as a free experience, along with a huge marketing campaign from Coca-Cola. The skill was the most downloaded and played skill of november of 2019 as a result.