Alexa+ Voice Routines

Expanding one of the most loved Alexa features with natural conversation and AI capabilities.

The Challenge

Routines allow customers to initiate a series of custom actions (playing music, controlling smart home devices, etc.) with specific trigger, for example a voice command (like saying “Alexa, Start my morning”). They’re one of Alexa’s most powerful and loved features, with 38.4M daily active users executing over 1B weekly actions. Despite their popularity, customers research showed creating and managing routines felt confusing, hidden in the Alexa app, and too time-consuming. Creating a routine in the Alexa app could take 15+ steps, requiring deep knowledge of available actions that left many new customers frustrated.

With the increased agentic capabilites of a generative AI powered Alexa+, my team was tasked with reimagining Routines to include generative AI actions, support conversational creation, and address long-standing pain points around troubleshooting. We led an 18-month initiative to create a conversational, voice-first experience that could be announced with the launch of Alexa+.

 

Before this launch routines were only able to be edited and created in the Alexa app. Now, customer could simply talk to Alexa on any device describe what they wanted and Alexa would create it for them.

 

My Role

As the senior conversational UX designer on the Alexa+ Routines team, I led conversational voice design for the new routines experience. I collaborated with a senior UX designer, UX researcher, product managers, engineers, and AI/ML teams to deliver a scalable conversational system that could expand over time. My responsibilities included:

  • Helping define launch scope by advocating for user needs while balancing technical constraints

  • Integrating new genAI-powered actions and dynamic behaviors

  • Defining conversational customer journeys across Echo screened devices, web, the Alexa app, and smart speaker devices.

Process

Routines are powerful, but also inherently complex. I focused on key challenges to ensure the redesign was conversational, intuitive, and AI-ready:

Awareness & Editing by Voice. In the past customers had to go deep in the Alexa app menus to create or edit routines. We introduced the ability to view, edit, and cancel routines directly on any Echo device, bringing visibility and control closer to where routines actually run. Customers no longer had to open an app to create routines, they could just tell Alexa what they wanted and have a natural conversation about it.

Simplification. Research showed most users want simple, goal-driven automations. Instead of making customers search for specific actions, we allowed them to express their intents naturally (“Alexa, help me create a bedtime routine for the kids”) and Alexa would suggest options. This required understanding the most likely actions, setting clear conversational boundaries, and ensuring the system gracefully handled incomplete or ambiguous requests.

Reliable AI Actions. Generative AI actions are naturally worded requests that allows customers to describe almost anything they’d like to happen in the routine (ex. “...then tell me the warmest time to run today based on the forecast”). However, since the model executes these request at runtime it introduced failure cases not found in deterministic routines. To preserve customer trust, I designed clear expectation-setting language, informative confirmations, and conversational troubleshooting in case results differed from the customer’s expectations.

Personalization and Privacy. We launched personalized routines, which allows users to create automations triggered only by a specific person (“When Rachel says good morning…”). This required updating the Alexa app UI and incorporating transparent language so customers understand who and what triggers their routines. Mismatches between expectation and behavior quickly erode trust, so I focused on ensuring clarity, predictability, and high customer comprehension.



Examples of viewing and editing Routines in the Alexa app.

Impact

The launch of voice routines in 2025 modernized one of Alexa’s most powerful capabilities and built the foundation for a more conversational, intelligent, and intuitive smart home experience. Voice creation fundamentally changed how customers interact with routines on Alexa+. It is now the primary method for creating new routines and custom AI actions are the second most used actions in routines. Customers who create routines by voice are more engaged, having almost twice as many executed routines and more active routines in their account compared to non-voice creation users. 

Following the Alexa+ launch, I continue to lead iterative releases to expand features, improve troubleshooting, and support new AI capabilities.

“I asked it to fix one of my old broken Alexa Routines and it did it! It just works.”


“I was even able to build a routine… just by talking to the Echo Show. That’s next-level accessible! This feature alone could turn out to be the killer smart home app.”
— USA Today Review

A detailed case study is available upon request