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Redefining Feedback Experience for Alexa’s Hunch Notifications in Smart Homes — Less Intrusive Alerts, More Accurate Proactive Actions by Alexa
Feedback experience
voice user interface
proactive ai
Fall 2024
Hunches
3 updates
“By the way...”
Scope
As part of the Spring'24 HCI/d Studio course at Indiana University Bloomington, I collaborated with a team of 3 UX researchers and 3 UX designers to work on an industry sponsored project. Our team was matched to work on Amazon Alexa’s Feedback Experience for the ‘Hunches’ feature.
My Role
Analyzed current user perceptions of Alexa's Hunches feature through digital ethnography on Reddit and Alexa’s community forums.
Created semi-structured protocols for User Interviews and Usability Testing.
Facilitated a co-design workshop with current Alexa users.
Proactively used triangulation to validate our insights by cross-referencing findings from all our research methods.
Sketched and designed rapid prototypes for multiple touchpoints using Figma.
Presented research findings to stakeholders through compelling storytelling and comprehensive documentation.
Context
Skills
UX Research: Literature Review, Digital Ethnography, Co-design Workshop, User Interviews, Usability Testing
UX Design: Sketches, Wire-framing,
Hi-fidelity prototyping.
TL;DR
Alexa's Hunches is a proactive feature that automatically performs smart home actions (like turning off lights) based on predicted user patterns. While it aims to be helpful, these automated actions don't always align with user preferences — making user feedback essential.
We focused on improving how users can provide feedback to make Alexa's proactive actions more accurate, understanding current user perceptions of Hunch notifications and recommending changes across how the notifications can be delivered across multiple touchpoints.
Improved Alexa's ‘Hunches’ feature discovery across multiple touchpoints in the app and Alexa device ecosystem, making it easier for users to identify Alexa's proactive behavior.
Improved users' understanding of when and why Alexa performs proactive actions by enhancing transparency around Hunches, reducing confusion during the onboarding phase.
Redesigned Hunch notifications to be less intrusive through passive notification alerts.
How Does Alexa Act On ‘Hunches’?
With Hunches enabled, it can learn from your daily routine and usage patterns to manage your smart home devices automatically.
A. Suggest Actions
Alexa had a hunch and suggested:
"By the way, you forgot to turn off your living room lights, would you like me to turn them off?"
Enabled by default
OR
B. take proactive Actions
Alexa proactively acted on a hunch by taking an automatic action without prompting—a proactive action. Rather than using voice notification, Alexa simply logged this action in the Alexa app.
User has to manually enable
Now Picture This —
Working late at night...
However, based on your routine, Alexa assumes it’s your bedtime. Alexa had a hunch, that smart lights were left on by mistake and turned them off in the middle of your work.
Alexa assumed it’s bed time, so turned the lights off for you
However, based on your routine, Alexa assumes it’s your bedtime. Alexa had a hunch, that smart lights were left on by mistake and turned them off in the middle of your work.
But, you have no clue why did the lights switch off. Was that Alexa?
In this case, automatic actions were enabled, and Alexa took a proactive action, however, the user wasn’t notified.
Here’s where the current Feedback System falls short
With Hunches enabled, it can learn from your daily routine and usage patterns to manage your smart home devices automatically.
Scroll right to view the entire current Hunches feedback flow that users go through
To Summarize The Problem
We took a two fold approach to breakdown the problems we identified.
problem area 01
Lack of Awareness Around Hunches
Hunches is placed under settings and not along with other features like Routines in Screen 2 which makes it difficult to find Hunches. Everytime if a user wants to check the activity, they’d have to navigate 4 layers deep.
Hunches activity is hidden under deep navigation
Everytime if a user wants to check the Hunches activity, they’d have to navigate four layers deep.
Hunch Notifications Need More Customization
Hunches is placed under settings and not along with other features like Routines in Screen 2 which makes it difficult to find Hunches. Everytime if a user wants to check the activity, they’d have to navigate 4 layers deep.
problem area 02
Feedback for hunches is limited
Hunches is placed under settings and not along with other features like Routines in Screen 2 which makes it difficult to find Hunches. Everytime if a user wants to check the activity, they’d have to navigate 4 layers deep.
users don't have the opportunity to give detailed or contextual feedback on Alexa's Proactive Actions
Everytime if a user wants to check the Hunches activity, they’d have to navigate four layers deep.
users don't care about giving feedback for Hunches
Hunches is placed under settings and not along with other features like Routines in Screen 2 which makes it difficult to find Hunches. Everytime if a user wants to check the activity, they’d have to navigate 4 layers deep.
Solving for problem area 01 - Lack of awareness around hunches
Hunches need more discoverability.
Alexa users often aren't aware of —
What do Hunches actually do?
When does Alexa act on Hunches?
Why does Alexa take a specific proactive action?
insight
Hunches’ Activities Hidden Deep in App Navigation
Action
Display Latest Hunches Upfront on Home Screen
before
Current design requires navigating through 4 layers to access hunches activity
Added ‘Triggered by Hunches’ tag in the device tile to inform users of proactive actions performed on it
Introduced Hunches on the home screen along with our Alexa Features
Hunches
3 updates
after
Re-designed version of the home screen in Alexa App
insight
Hunch Notifications Need More Customization
Action
Semi-proactive Notifications
concept
Pulsating Widget for Alexa Echo show
By leveraging the Echo Show's always-on display, we can grab the user's attention to notify them of proactive actions triggered by Alexa without being intrusive
concept
Current widget
Current widget
(To invoke Alexa)
Current widget
Hunches
Living Room
At 2AM
Turned lights off
Hunches
Living Room
At 2AM
Turned lights off
Hunches
Turned lights off
Living Room
Closed Back Door
Kitchen
Re-designed widgets
(To invoke Alexa + hunch notifications)
concept
Alexa Widgets for Alexa App
By enhancing Alexa's widget, we integrated hunch notifications to deliver updates on the user's home screen without intrusion
insight
Intrusive notifications are preferred during high-stakes situations
Action
Discarding On/Off Hunches and introducing device level alerts
before
after
concept
create custom alerts at a device-level
While enabling devices for Alexa's hunches, users can choose to set alert types for each selected device without any additional steps
insight
App Provides Insufficient Context for Alexa’s Actions
Action
Gather Contextual Information From User Feedback
User can click on 'Give more info' to provide additional feedback.
option to provide contextual feedback for incorrect alexa actions
concept
understanding what went wrong with alexa's hunch
insight
Transparent Feedback Impact Increases User Engagement
Action
Showcase Alexa’s Hunch Model Improvement overtime based on User Feedback
concept
concept
Showcase Impact of feedback over time
Demonstrating Alexa's hunch model enhancements via iterative user feedback to highlight accuracy improvements.
Metrics I’d like to track...
01
Ratio of correct vs. incorrect actions taken by Alexa
02
Frequency of users checking their Alexa action history
03
Number of unprompted feedback submissions from users
04
Comparison between positive and negative feedback submissions (expected to decrease over time as accuracy improves)
Takeaways
Navigating Ambiguity
Navigating ambiguity, tackling time shortage with strategic decisions, leveraging storytelling to communicate were among the top learnings I had throughout the course.
be strategic with user research
Navigating ambiguity, tackling time shortage with strategic decisions, leveraging storytelling to communicate were among the top learnings I had throughout the course.
storytelling is everything.
Navigating ambiguity, tackling time shortage with strategic decisions, leveraging storytelling to communicate were among the top learnings I had throughout the course.
Gratitude
Thank you Monica Chan and Colin Gray for mentoring us throughout this project! And, a big thank you to Rohan, Samarth, Snigdha, Shantanu, Matyas, and Mukund for being such an amazing team!
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