Record and share conversations with Amazon Alexa. — In the world of visual design, there are countless ways to share our work with others. To showcase a static interface, we can use screenshots. To illustrate an interaction, we can make an animated GIF. …

Friends and family had a lot of questions about Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Here’s what I told them. — More than two years since the launch of the first Amazon Echo, the popularity of voice assistants shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, the Amazon Echo Dot was the top-selling product by any manufacturer on Amazon this holiday season, with “tens of millions” sold worldwide. Like many startup…

Non-verbal audio and sound are crucial elements of effective voice-first experience design. — As platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant continue to drive the growth of voice user interfaces (VUI), more and more designers are finding themselves working in a medium that is new to most of us: audio. Understandably, the focus of the design process is usually placed on the ‘voice’…

Embedding mp3s into your voice UI is one of the most compelling capabilities that SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) has to offer voice designers. Intro music, sound effects, and recorded voices are underused yet powerful elements of voice design projects. And best of all, they’re easy to implement. Get started including audio in your Voice design 1. Encode your mp3 to make it compatible. MP3 files…

Voice apps get a new way to stand out in a very crowded market — There were some big announcements at an Amazon event this week — most of them focused on new gadgets, namely the Echo Spot. Similar to the Echo Dot, it has 4 microphone arrays, but also a small screen that looks like a clock. Hidden in the big event where we…

Why these two tech titans are joining forces on voice. — It’s not often that two competing companies that are each pouring billions of dollars into similar platforms agree to work together, but that’s exactly what we saw with the just-announced partnership between Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana. Trying to predict the future is a crucial part of being a startup…

The rise of voice interfaces will change the way we design everything. — When we hear the term “voice” we often think of platforms such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, but the growing popularity of voice interfaces will make them a primary means of digital interaction across every medium, including web and mobile. Voice will impact every form of digital design, forever…

Apple enters the smart assistant speaker market. Sort of. — At this year’s WWDC, Apple announced a Siri-powered home speaker, aptly named the HomePod. Rumors about this device have been circulating for well over a year, and has been described by some as Apple’s “Echo Killer.” As the founder of a startup building design software for voice applications, I think…

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how it works — Everyone is excited about the announcement of the Amazon Echo Show, an Alexa-powered device that features a screen, but there is an equally disruptive part of today’s news. Amazon just released free audio messaging, text messaging, and calling between all Alexa devices, as well as the Amazon Alexa mobile app. A New Life for the Alexa App …