BLIND FOUNDATION LIBRARY SKILL
- USER TESTING

AIM:              "To examine the experience of using the library skill with potential users and identify                                            successes, pain points and possible improvements on behalf of Sonnar Interactive                                           and The Blind Foundation (NZ)"

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The Amazon Echo is a smart speaker which connects to “Alexa,” a voice activated artificial assistant. Sonnar Interactive have been working in conjunction with the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind (Blind Foundation) to develop a new skill for “Alexa”. The purpose of this skill is to assist those visually impaired to access a collection of audiobooks licensed by the Blind Foundation.

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To test this newly developed skill, we ran two separate interviews with two members of the Blind Foundation, neither of whom had previously used Alexa. During our interviews, we introduced them to the Alexa, observed how they used ‘her’ and questioned them on their experiences using the Blind Foundation Library Skill.

Undertaking a 'teardown', creating Personas, Empathy and User Journey Maps to gauge our results showed that despite finding the tutorial straight forward, both participants found that their experiences within the tutorial did not align with their experiences in navigating the skill.  Our recommendations included altering the language and explanations given in the tutorial to address the following problems:

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• Navigation through the Blind Foundation Library Skill is at times disorientating for a first-time user.

• Users found navigation terms operating within the book to be vague.

• Without a clear sense of control, users became disengaged.

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In collaboration with Jessica Ward, Emma Van Ausch and Alex Hough