Why couldn't shoppers tell six Echo Shows apart?
A usability study of Amazon's mobile shopping experience for the Echo Show line and why Alexa+, the most-promoted feature of 2026, was invisible to the people meant to buy it.
CLIENT
Amazon Consumer Devices
Deliverable
Usability report to Amazon Consumer Devices, Marketing & UXR partners
MY ROLE
· Moderator · Documentation
· Research Synthesizer
team
4 Graduate Researchers
(equal contribution)
timeline
12 weeks
Jan - Mar 2026
Location
Seattle, WA
100%
of participants misread model numbers as version numbers
3/8
users did not noticed Alexa+ after 15 mins of browsing
6/8
had the wrong mental model of the feature (paid subscription)
The Challenge
Amazon launched Alexa+ — their most strategic AI feature of 2026 — and nobody noticed it existed.
When a first-time shopper opens the Amazon app to browse Echo Shows, do they understand what they're looking at — and do they notice Alexa+?
We had four weeks to find out.
Search results for Echo Show
What the users see
What we set out to learn
We translated the brief into two research questions that could be answered with task-based testing:
Purchase-confidence problem: if shoppers can't tell models apart, they bounce.
Feature-adoption problem: if shoppers don't see Alexa+, Amazon's most strategic launch of the year goes silent at the point of sale.
Method
Moderated usability study, 8 participants, 5 tasks designed to isolate whether users could differentiate Echo Show models and discover Alexa+ without being prompted.
Choice 1 — A/B isolation tasks.
This let us isolate whether shoppers were leaning on imagery or text to differentiate models — a cleaner read than asking people to introspect on their own strategy.
Choice 2 — Pre-tap recall, not just observation.
For Alexa+, we didn’t ask participants about it while browsing. After 15 mins, we asked them whether they remembered seeing “Alexa+.” This helped separate discoverability (seeing it) from comprehension (understanding it).
Choice 3 — Triangulated data.
Quantitative metrics (task success, time-on-task, swipe count, recall rate, perceived model count) ran alongside qualitative think-aloud and a post-task survey.
Weekly synthesis session with the research team and
Amazon stakeholders, February 2026.
4 usability issues, 3 insights
Amazon Echo Show · HCDE 517 · 8 participants · click any card to expand
Limitations & Next Steps
UserTesting is fast and geographically flexible, but the friction of sharing screen between the prototype and Zoom occasionally interrupted natural browsing. For a study that hinges on what shoppers notice, in-person sessions with eye-tracking would surface attention patterns we had to infer.
What this study taught me
1.
Recall is the cleanest measure of a design's voice.
If a shopper can browse for fifteen minutes and not remember the most-promoted feature in your roadmap, the design is not failing to teach — it's failing to speak. That distinction will shape how I run the next study.
2.
Equal contribution is a research method.
Every member of our team moderated, observed, synthesized, and wrote. The findings in this report are sharper because four researchers stress-tested every claim before it left the room.
I want to design that into every team I work with going forward.
Team
Researched and written with Alefiya Haveliwala, Hajra Lat, and Lori Li, under the guidance of Dr. Katya Cherukumilli at the University of Washington, Dept. of Human-Centered Design & Engineering.
Conducted in sponsorship with the Amazon Consumer Devices team, with thanks to the UX Research partners who scoped the brief and reviewed the findings.
