The Amazon Echo device, first released in the U.S. on November 6 2014, and in the U.K. in 2016. The Amazon Echo was Amazon’s first smart speaker and it joined Amazon’s device portfolio alongside the Kindle e-Reader, the Amazon Fire tablet, phone and Stick. The device is connected to Amazon’s ‘intelligent’ voice-assistant service ‘Alexa’, which enables users to access a range of Amazon only services such as shopping (Amazon Prime), as well as play music, listen to the news and use organisational functions such as to-do lists, and calendars. It also has support for ‘Internet of Things’ connected devices that users may have in their homes. In addition, users can ask the Alexa questions through its ability to integrate with Wikipedia articles and make calls and send and listen back to text messages once the device is synced to the user’s smartphone.

The compact cylindrical device is made from aluminium and plastic and includes a seven-microphone array that allows the user to communicate with the Echo from a range of different distances using near field communication, lighting up blue to confirm that it has heard a users’ command. The Alexa service that works through the Echo device operates by taking a recording of the user’s voice command sent over the internet to Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service and registered through machine learning. The recording is turned into an actionable command and the relevant output is then sent back to the device so that it enacts the users request. The Alexa Voice Service works on ‘the cloud’ – servers accessed over the internet – and requires a significant amount of computing power to work. As a consequence, Alexa will not work when the Echo is offline.

When in development, the Echo’s ‘wake word’ was ‘computer’ according to a 2016 Business Insider article, a choice that was inspired by the commands given to the female-voiced onboard computer LCARS in the television series Star Trek. This fictional onboard computer was a significant point of inspiration for the interaction design of the Echo, yet the wake word ‘computer’ failed during user testing. Alexa was suggested instead, due to its uniqueness, its use of soft vowels and a hard ‘x’.

The Amazon Echo is an influential object of contemporary connected product design history. Its acquisition into the V&A collection represents Amazon’s significant impact on the smart home product design market and the subsequent cultural discussions it inspires.

As one of the most successful objects created by one of the ‘big four’ technology producers, alongside Google, Facebook and Apple, that has become ubiquitous in the home environments of North America and Europe, and in certain countries in Asia where it has proven popular such as India and Japan. The Amazon Echo has created significant critical discussions around our relationship to digital design and surveillance, privacy and gender, as the invention of the connected object forces us to negotiate new boundaries with the objects in our lives. The Amazon Echo, as the first smart speaker to integrate a voice assistant to come from a major technology producer, has set a precedent, both in terms of design and in ethical standards and concerns that can be evidenced in other products that followed such as the Google Home (2016), Apple’s HomePod (2017) and Facebook’s Portal (2018).