When I was working at Bontouch I designed my first voice app for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa—Filtrete.

Filtrete is an air filter product by 3M. Their smart air filters monitor how much life they have left, and through bluetooth you can check when they need replacing.

We built voice apps where you could check on the filter life, the outdoor air quality, and add new replacements to the Alexa shopping list.

I had never designed anything like this and the challenge was so fun! I learned so much—from how to mock up conversations trees, to writing and previewing pronounciation and tone using the Amazon and Google voice developer tools. In 2018 the voice tools had a looooooong way to go. It wasn’t easy to design, but learning together with my awesome developers turned challenge into fun. If you’re getting into voice design I recommend reading this book.

Designing for voice interactions allowed me to lean into a very human-centric approach to design, for what is more human than spoken language?