It's been about a month of living with Amazon's new Echo Show. The device has quickly been adopted by my family and now plays a key role in our daily, kitchen-centric rituals. 

I was honestly a bit skeptical initially, but have since been impressed with the core technology and its interactions – especially in how voice eliminates so much of the input/output friction that we've gotten accustomed to with mobile device usage.

The experience initially felt pretty utilitarian (e.g., "Hey Alexa, add XYZ to our shopping list.") but is slowly evolving into a more playful, digital companion alongside some of our more mundane, daily chores. More of a conversational interface. 

All of this, of course, got me thinking more about designing for these types of voice interactions, so I checked out Amazon's Voice Design Guide.  

What struck me is how much overlap there is with good interaction design in general; from establishing a product purpose, to understanding intent and fleshing out user scripts and flows.

With this product in particular, I think the screen actually does a nice job of addressing some key challenges inherent in voice interactions, like 'invisible' content and/or feature-set discoverability, system feedback, and presence-reinforcement (which drives repeat usage and sustained engagement.)  

William Gibson once said: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." Word. 

Marc