Orange — smart speaker

Not how to design a smart speaker for Spain. Whether to build one at all.

In 2018 I was handed a project with no clear precedent: validate whether Orange should launch a smart speaker in the Spanish market. Not how to design it. Whether it made sense to build it at all. The technology existed, but nobody really knew if Spanish users wanted it, how they'd use it, or whether the market was ready.

The immediate problem was methodological. You can't run a usability test on a voice product that doesn't exist yet. There's no screen, no prototype to click through, nothing for a user to react to naturally. So before designing the product, we had to design a way to research it.

I led a team of three through two phases. The first was pure segmentation: sixteen user interviews to map the territory before touching any functionality. Who would actually use this? What was their existing relationship with voice assistants? What usage contexts made sense in a Spanish household? From that we identified three distinct user mindsets that shaped the entire product strategy going forward.

The second phase was harder to execute: validation through Wizard of Oz methodology. A team member operated the voice assistant invisibly while the user believed they were interacting with a real system. I designed the VA personality, the conversation flows, and the test scenarios directly from what we'd learned in phase one. We iterated across five blocks of four tests each, not chasing perfection but trying to understand where the interaction broke down and why.