Voice Prototyping Tools are gaining popularity among app designers as a way to improve the User Experience. An increasing number of apps are using voice as an alternative to the traditional on-screen user interface. The big tech players have their own voice functionalities. Apple has Siri, Amazon has Alexa, and Google has Google Assistant. This comes as no surprise.
It is safe to say that apps have embraced voice interaction as a way to improve accessibility for users. As a result, a regular user is no longer faced with a single way to interact with an app. This is more than a trend that will fade away sometime soon. In other words, voice functions are here to stay, and if you want your app to stay up to date, you should start considering some form of voice interaction. Not doing so might negatively impact your app’s UX.
To integrate voice functions successfully into your app, your team should consider following a voice design approach with the right prototyping tool. Similar to building other elements of an app, prototyping voice elements helps designers build an app based on users’ real needs. Additionally, this also helps your team optimize the workflow.
In this post, we discuss why voice technology matters for your app, what Voice Prototyping Tools are, and why your app needs one.
Why a Voice Interface Matters
Any user will probably tell you that being able to interact with an app in more than one way is very convenient. As devices become more essential to our daily lives, any user will most likely need to perform certain tasks in different ways. Currently, most apps focus only on the traditional user interface. However, as voice is becoming more integrated into apps, this is starting to change.
Voice interaction is now seen by many companies as an alternative to the traditional ways a user can interact with an app. The act of augmenting the user-screen interaction of a device opens up many possibilities. Just look at the success of Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant and the impact they’ve had on people’s lives. Thanks to their voice interfaces, they have quickly gained popularity, market share, and recognition as some of the most widely used devices inside our homes.
These interfaces need to be built properly. Using voice technology is no simple task, and in order to make the most out of them, your app will need to use a rigorous and systematic design approach that can leverage this technology while at the same time improving the User Experience.
In order to integrate voice technology correctly into your app, it is important that your design team has the necessary skills. Additionally, it is also important that they use the right voice prototyping tools. A voice prototyping design approach allows app designers to correctly integrate what a user needs in relation to voice functionality. An important part of this success lies in the prototyping tools used.
The Importance of Voice Prototyping Tools
Any company that has undergone a custom app development project understands the importance of optimizing the workflow. Time spent working on an app costs money, so you don’t want your development team to have unclear goals or inefficient processes. Using the right prototyping tools helps you avoid this risk when integrating voice into your app.
Voice prototyping tools are a type of design tool that helps designers structure and organize the user journey throughout the different voice interactions of your app. They help build a better UX, making it easier to improve and visualize.
The best design teams understand that although prototyping takes time, it is far more time-consuming to improvise when building an app. That is why such an important emphasis is placed on using the right prototyping tools. These tools help understand the specific touch and pain points a user might encounter when interacting with the voice feature of your app.
From a design standpoint, voice interaction design can quickly become very complex, so using a prototyping tool that allows for greater flexibility becomes a must if you want to deliver a unique voice experience. One of the most popular ones is Adobe XD. However, others exist. At Koombea, for example, we prefer Figma over other design tools like Adobe XD or Sketch, mainly because of its collaboration features.
By using this powerful prototyping tool, our team can easily understand what a user journey might look like when using voice interaction. Changes can easily be implemented through an iterative design thinking process, helping improve the User Experience easily.
These are some of the advantages of using a prototyping tool for voice design:
- Organize information clearly in a visual way.
- Understand the entire user journey beyond the UI.
- Improve the app’s UX by identifying strategic pain points.
- Collaborate and iterate constantly to improve the end result.
Examples of Voice Prototyping Tools
In order to excel at prototyping your app’s voice commands it is important to use the right tools. These are some examples of voice prototyping tools:
Adobe XD
This is a good tool for anyone looking to do some prototyping for voice. However, it may sometimes feel too limited as voice is not its strength. If interactions tend to get too complex, you might find yourself in need of another more specialized tool. If the project you are working on is a simple one, then this might suit your needs.
Fabble
If there’s one thing that stands out from this tool it is its ease of use. Designers can easily understand how it works without having to spend time figuring out commands and other complex features. Another thing that stands out is its testing feature.
Botmock
This has become one of the default prototyping tools in the industry. Thanks to its web sharing feature, users can easily test the prototype and give feedback to designers. The downside to it is that it is not as intuitive and easy to use as other alternatives.
Spreadsheets
Although it might surprise you, any spreadsheet software can help you build a voice prototype. Even if they are not originally intended to do so, designers can use them to visualize how a user might interact with an app through voice commands.
Figma
This tool offers a Voice UI Kit that can be used to prototype any voice project in a collaborative manner. Designers can easily implement changes based on user feedback.
Final Thoughts on Voice Prototyping
Voice prototyping tools are one of the key success factors of any app project that uses voice. Voice prototyping is very useful when working in voice design because it allows for flexibility and efficient use of resources.
If you are not sure what prototyping tool you should use, it might be best to contact an experienced app development company that can give you some pointers. They can help you optimize your workflow and understand how voice can make your app better.
Start implementing voice interfaces into your app with the right voice prototyping tools and stay ahead of the curve.
