Alexa, announce dinner is ready
In 2018, Alexa Announcements was launched allowing customers to broadcast quick, one-way voice messages across their Alexa devices — essentially acting like a household intercom. The most common use case was announcing “Dinner is ready,” but the vision was broader: create a fast, simple, and effective way for families to share time-sensitive information throughout the home. I served as the UX Design Lead for the initial launch and subsequent improvements.
My Role
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UX Design Lead
Stakeholders
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Director for Alexa Comms
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Alexa Comms Design Leads (UX, Conversation and Visual Design)
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Multimodal Platform Design Leads
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Announcements
Product Manager -
Alexa Async
Engineering Team -
Alexa Communications Design Director
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VP of Devices Design Organization
Experience Tenets
Announcements are ephemeral
Prioritize speed
Minimize setup or configuration
Challenges
Research revealed that families often lacked an ideal way to communicate when spread out in different rooms. Some even resorted to texting each other from inside the same home. The team set out to solve this gap by delivering an ephemeral, lightweight, and voice-first communication experience that would be immediate and frictionless — more like shouting across the house than sending a formal message.
Shouting
Alternative
Texting
Alternative
The competitors for this experience were shouting and texting. We aimed to create an experience that was as easy as shouting or texting, but more effective and reliable.
Execution
Voice-first design
We optimized for a single-turn dialog, avoiding multiple steps that slowed users down. Announcements used the sender’s recorded voice so families knew who the message was from.​​
​​Visuals
Though primarily an auditory feature, I designed confirmation and playback screens that were simple and glanceable. We decided against showing transcripts, which could be error-prone, and instead leveraged familiar templates and custom illustrations.
Sound Effects
Based on beta feedback, we added playful, context-sensitive sounds (e.g., dinner bell, rooster crow, spooky chime). I proposed auto-adding these based on common announcement phrases, ensuring delight without extra complexity.​
Beta Testing
Internal beta tests validated the need for single-turn interactions, sender confirmation, and the appeal of sound effects. We iterated based on user feedback to fine-tune the experience.
Designs
Announcements on Echo Show
Tell the kids it's bedtime.
Results
Alexa Announcements launched publicly in 2018 and quickly became a core Alexa Communications feature with millions of monthly active users.
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Customers relied on it to coordinate household routines, transition between activities, and capture attention when texts or calls went ignored.
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The backend and design patterns we created also supported other Alexa features like Ring doorbell alerts and calendar reminders.
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Over time, the feature expanded beyond Echo devices to the Alexa mobile app, Fire TV, Kids’ Tablets, and third-party Alexa-enabled devices.
“It’s a quick and easy way to communicate with everyone in the house very quickly. I don’t need a response but want everyone to do or know something”
Amber, Comms Landscape Study Participant