THE RELOCATION GUIDE.

VOICE ASSISTANT

The Story.

Renny is a relocation voice assistant, who helps users with their international move to Canada. He provides a step-by-step guide that highlights the important steps needed during the planning process. He aims to become a one-stop assistant, reducing the time people spend planning and researching for their move.

The Problem.

Research confirms that people are spending too much time researching information about their move. Most people who relocate abroad, spend more than 21 hours trawling through pages and pages of websites to find the right information. Whilst relocating can be an exciting time, it also can bring lots of unwanted stress to peoples lives. So this was where the idea was born.

Tools:

Whimsical, Voiceflow, Google Actions Console, Dashbot Analytics.

Application:

Google Action

Research

In this first stage, user research was used to identify the features and use cases for the assistant. In order to assess unique opportunities, a competitive analysis was also produced.

Following the initial research, several different use cases were identified and the ideation began to take place.

The two main use cases for the relocation assistant would be:

1. To provide a step-by-step guide.

2. To provide cultural information of the users destination.

However, due to project timing concerns, only the step-by-step guide would be designed during the first design phase. Providing the cultural information would be designed during the second phase to ensure timings were adhered to.

Persona

It was important to identify the persona of the assistant, detailing its character and how will it converse with the user. Various conversational components were created that resembled the assistants personality.

Voice Interaction Model

A collection of utterances from the chosen use cases, were collected from the target audience and grouped into intents, utterances and slots. These were then imported to the design prototype.

Sample Dialogs and Flowcharts

Sample dialogs were written, showcasing the happy path of each intent. Different scenarios were also covered such as error cases and edge cases. The dialogs were then tested using a low-fidelity WoZ (Wizard of Oz) method, to check the concept and dialog.

Once the sample dialogs were created, flowcharts were developed to map out and visualise the flow and logic of the conversation.

Prototype

Using Voiceflow, the entire flow was developed, ensuring to cover multiple edge cases and error-handling.

Process:

Designed the basic paths.
Built out and expanded each path.
Changed the wording and sentences to be more concise.
Added SSML effects within the flows to make the speech synthesis more natural sounding.
Adding earcons to create a more interactive experience.

Usability Testing

The design was tested remotely with 5 participants. This highlighted any usability issues, glitches and wording errors from within the system, ranging from minor to critical.

Refine

After reviewing the usability testing and results, multiple adjustments and refinements were performed to ensure the design reached higher usability levels.

Some alterations included:

Ensured that the correct intents were matched by creating separate slot values for individual numbers. This ensured intents were matched correctly and the right paths were followed.

Fixed the user sessions problem, to ensure users followed the correct path depending on first time vs returning user.

Added a randomiser to Step 4, to allow users to hear different conversations without repeating, allowing for more customisation and making it easier to navigate for the user.

Removed steps that added little or no effect to the user experience.

The Relocation Assistant has been released and is currently deployed as a Google Action. Further iterations will be added and continuously updated from looking at the data and analytics.