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Design an Alexa skill to help people skip the hassle for cooking

Problem

Cooking can be a hassle for working people and students, with their busy schedule, some often forgot what’s left in their fridges and end up wasting food; others hate spending time trying to figure out what to cook for each meal with the available ingredients.

Solution

I designed “cooking master”, a voice skill concept that enables Alexa to suggest recipes based on available ingredients in the fridge, remind users of expiring food, order missing ingredients from Amazon Fresh, and provide step-by-step cooking guidance via voice.

Efficiency

​VUI requires nothing other than a vocal command, users can get cooking suggestion by simply asking“ Hey Alexa, what should I cook?” instead of taping through a recipe App.

Convenience

VUI allows for a hands-free, eyes-free way in cooking, where users can focus on cooking by listening to cooking guidance without operating phones with their greasy hands.

2. Find recipes based on available ingredients.

3. Providing step-by-step guidance via voice.

In the following design section, I will explain some basics about the VUI design guide, and I will present three user cases to explain my rationale of using Alexa design guides in VUI design.

In VUI design, the best-case scenario is that when you ask Alexa something, she will get exactly what you want(the happy path). However, when in reality, people often ask Alexa something in a niche way. Therefore, to properly understand user intent, Alexa voice skill should cater for the differences in linguistics by using “synonyms” .

Tim was exhausted and hungry after a long day at work, he went back home and asked Alexa to find a dinner recipe: “Alexa, what’s for dinner tonight?”

Unlike GUI( e.g.app ), where users have to follow a linear path(e.g. flicking through all the different screens ). VUI is much more convenient and flexible, it can handle multiple ways to trigger a user action, by keeping options open and brief, and engaging users with definitive choices.

Emma’s fridge is a mess, she rarely checks the food inventory and ends up throwing a lot of food away, so she asks Alexa for help: Alexa, what’s left in my fridge?

In VUI design, conversion happens in a context and is not strictly based on logic. Thus, when designing for voice, we must take the contextual factors(e.g. user’s mastery level) into account.

Cooking can be a hassle for beginners. Mark has to follow cooking instructions by flicking through all the different screens of his phone, but it’s hard to operate the phone with his greasy hands. He finally got tired of this and asked Alexa for help: “Alexa, let’s start cooking!”

I walked through the above design to discover the edge cases that could break the user experience, then I added the following two paths for optimizing a smooth cooking experience.

There are two aspects to consider when designing for VUI. First: “Functionality”, I used a tool called “Voiceflow” to create the following conversion flow to explain the information architecture. The goal is to weigh the options in this voice skill and consider the ramifications of those options.

The second aspect of VUI design is to think from the user perspective, consider the way people speak and the context in which the conversion happens. Below is my design rationale:

I tested this VUI prototype with 5 people, 4 of them point out an important user need that I ignored previously: to choose a recipe, users need to see what the recipe looks like, rather than what it sounds like. Therefore, I designed a companion app for this voice skill to address this issue.

When designing for VUI, it’s important to understand the pros and cons that come along with it. VUIs are invisible and simple task-focused (e.g. find an easy recipe, follow cooking guidance ). However, when it comes to decision-making and complex tasks(e.g. select a recipe, view and edit a shopping list ), VUI can’t communicate with users as effectively as GUI, that’s why I designed the above companion app to cover the shortage of this voice skill.

To bridge the gap between design and development for this voice skill, there is a technical constraint with the “cooking suggestion based on available ingredients” feature. Although the smart fridge can keep track of the food status by scanning the bar code, I didn’t find any of them can precisely reflect the changes in quantity(e.g. users took 5 tomatoes out from a box of 10.).

Keep Prompt Brief

Although VUI can provide faster results than GUI via voice, users are more likely to forget the information(e.g. a long recipe list) by listening. Thus, prompts must be designed to be as short as possible to provide “just enough” information without overwhelming users.

User Testing Matters

I have walked through the entire prototype myself and find that user testing is more important for the invisible interface like VUI, as VUI design does not strictly follow a “linear path”, it’s almost impossible for one person to figure out all the options and the ramifications of those options. I think user testing and teamwork will help a lot in discovering all those different possibilities.

I created the following business canvas to illustrate some business hypotheses as well as explain how this voice skill could align the user needs with business goals.

The next step is to publish this voice skill on Amazon, which requires some more design iterations and development work(e.g. recipe API call). I will continue to work on this project, please come back to check for further updates.

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