Learn to Design a Voice User Interface | Alexa Development Basics

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Voice User Interfaces Compared to Other Interfaces
In comparing with a graphical user interface (GUI), voice and conversations present new challenges when the end user can’t see the options available. A simple example of this is planning a trip. When you plan a trip online with a website, it’s fairly simple to enter data into a series of boxes to represent where you’re leaving from, where you’re going to, what you’re going to do, and the date.

If you were to try to do this from a typical automated phone system, it can sound something like this: “If this is a domestic trip, press 1. If this is an international trip, press 2. If you are going hiking, press 3. If you are going surfing, press 4.” Is this a realistic option? No, not especially, but it helps to highlight some of the challenges of traditional automation.

Now let’s examine a conversational interface. If you were to call and set up a trip with a person, the conversation can go something like this:

Travel planner : “What are we doing for your next trip?”
You : “Well, I want to go hiking in Hawaii.”
Travel planner : “Sounds exciting! When do you want to go, and where are you leaving from?”
You : “Let’s plan for a month away; I’m leaving from Seattle.”
Having natural responses and being able to handle inputs that aren’t quite what you expected are key factors that make conversational interfaces so powerful and intuitive. Using Alexa, building a conversational interface like this is a part of the design process that we want to explicitly design and plan.