Process

The voice design process was at the time an unchartered design domain, but I came at the challenge with a philosophy: if you want to design conversations, you have to have conversations. 

After 2 weeks of preliminary research in the wine category, my team made a significant pivot based on on-site exploration of stakeholder interviews, shopper intercepts, a focus group and behavioral observation. We identified that shoppers were well-guided in the wine category, but that they were standing for long periods of time in front of the liquor shelf, an area of the store that had not yet received the same signage treatment & product selection tool development by the owners.

We pivoted to creating a whiskey selection tool for the shopper—the Bottle Genius. Word choice, conversational flow and error-response were all inspired by real conversations between shoppers and associates. In addition, we designed the tone of voice of the assistant based on the personalities of two prominent real-life experts in the store: the owner and the spirits buyer.

Solution

The Bottle Genius powered by SmartAisle was the first recognized instance of a voice-powered virtual assistant in the brick & mortar shopping environment. It led to a 20% YOY sales growth for Bottlerocket, and remains in their store today. We went on to design similar products for BevMo! and Estee Lauder over the coming year. SmartAisle was named the #2 new retail technology by Field Agent and Rise Magazine, beating out Customer Experience leaders like Sephora, and received over 90MM impressions via press coverage, including the Harvard Business Review.

See the demo video →