Alexa, open Cervecistas

Alexa, open Cervecistas (2022)

Working with Mahou San Miguel, the Spanish brewer, we developed the “Cervecistas” Alexa skill, a voice app for Amazon Alexa that combines a voice experience with a companion web interface you can use on your phone. Based on La Cervecista board game, the skill gamifies blind beer tasting, giving users an educational and entertaining experience that lets them become beer experts while tasting with friends.

The “Cervecistas” Alexa skill is an example of how conversational interfaces can be integrated with other platforms to create innovative, engaging brand experiences. Combining voice, web and gamification turned something as traditional as a beer-tasting board game into a guided, accessible, technologically advanced experience.

The challenge

Mahou San Miguel was looking for an innovative way to:

• Bring beer culture to new audiences.
• Create a memorable, distinctive brand experience.
• Make use of emerging conversational technologies.
• Position itself as a pioneer in using voice interfaces in its sector.
• Generate engagement among beer lovers through a social experience.

The main challenge was to design a hybrid multimodal experience that took advantage of Alexa’s conversational capabilities and created a unique audio experience to guide people through blind tasting, while letting participants rate the beer they thought they’d tasted. This Alexa experience had to work both on its own and as a companion to the “El juego de la Cervecista” board game.

The Cervecista board game.

This project shows our ability to design and develop complex conversational experiences that go beyond simple voice commands, creating real value for brands and their consumers.

Our solution

We developed a multimodal experience that brings together:

1. An Alexa skill that guides users through the tasting process, giving instructions and educational information and running the game.
2. A companion web platform where users can:
   • Set up the tasting session.
   • Join games using QR codes.
   • Submit their ratings of the beers.
   • See scores and follow the game’s progress.
   • Get beer recommendations for future tastings.

Channel

Amazon Alexa. A multimodal experience for devices with a screen (multimodal) and without a screen (voice-first). The skill works on Alexa devices with a screen (Echo Show, Fire TV) as well as devices without one, adapting the experience in each case.

Key features

• Host mode: lets one user organize the session, prepare the beers and run the game.
• Game system: creates virtual rooms so several participants can join with a QR code or the room name.
• Structured tasting guide: Alexa takes users through a systematic process to assess:
  • The beer’s color,
  • Alcohol content,
  • Beer segment,
  • Beer style,
  • The specific beer’s name.
• Scoring system: evaluates participants’ answers and determines the winners.
• Educational content: valuable information about beer styles, tasting techniques and beer culture.

Development process

1. Research and conversation design

We started with a research phase, including blind tasting sessions with users, to understand in depth:

• The needs and behaviors of beer lovers,
• Professional tasting terminology and process,
• The possibilities and limitations of the Alexa platform.

We built a first working prototype before full development, in which we conceptualized and defined the minimum viable voice experience around the game. From there, we designed the complete conversational structure, defining the dialog flows, voice commands and system responses.

2. Technical development

The technical development involved several components:

• Skill backend: built with Node.js using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK).
• Web interface: a responsive web platform integrated with the skill and accessible from any mobile device.
• Multimodal integration: coordinating the voice experience and the web through events.
• Rooms and games system: a system to manage simultaneous sessions, with unique, easy-to-remember room names.
• Database: designed and implemented to store information about beers and games.

3. Voice experience and audio assets

We worked with Alexa’s synthetic voice and Microsoft Azure’s Álvaro voice as the tasting guide, taking great care to make sure technical beer terms and international style names were pronounced correctly.

4. Testing and optimization

We ran extensive testing with:

• Beer experts to validate the content,
• Real users to optimize the conversational experience, in settings as varied as homes, office meeting rooms, a basement at Alexa’s 4th birthday party and a trade fair.
• Technical testing to make sure the integration between Alexa and the web was robust.

We went through several product iterations, each with beta testing with users and the resulting lessons and improvements.

Key lessons

• The importance of combining voice interfaces with visual components for complex experiences.
• The value of careful conversation design that guides users intuitively.
• How effective gamified experiences are at conveying specialized knowledge.
• The technical challenges of keeping voice and web platforms in sync.

Technologies used

• Amazon Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Web API for Echo devices with a screen.
• Node.js.
• AWS Amplify, AWS Lambda and DynamoDB.
• React (for the web frontend).
• WebSockets (for real-time communication).

🗓 Key dates

This project was developed by Monoceros Labs for Mahou San Miguel between 2021 and 2022.

• 12/26/2021: First working prototype. We made a video showing the game experience with Alexa and a mobile device.
• 09/15/2022: Soft launch. The first version of the Alexa skill is published.
• 11/03/2022: Testing and improvements. We tested the experience during Alexa’s 4th birthday celebration in Madrid.
• 12/21/2022: The latest, improved version of the Alexa skill is published.

🔗 More information

• Official Cervecistas page (in Spanish)
• The Alexa skill in the Alexa store on amazon.es.