Alexa Map View
A phone scan becomes a floor plan of the home, with every smart device on it, controlled from the map.
- Role
- Led the Alexa app’s smart home features and took Map View to launch
- Scale
- 50M+ monthly users of the app’s smart home features
- Launched
- November 2023, in the United States
I led the Alexa app’s smart home features, used by 50M+ people a month, and took Map View to launch in November 2023: a phone scan becomes a floor plan with every device on it. The mapping technology existed; the problem I owned was ease.
What I decided
Named ease as the hard problem
Phones could already measure a room: the iPhone 12 Pro gained LiDAR in 2020, and Apple gave developers RoomPlan in 2022. The question I owned was whether a customer could map a whole home.
Set the bar at 5.5 out of 7 for ease
Customers rated “Scanning my home to create a Map View is incredibly easy” on a 7-point scale. The scan had to reach 5.5, with the map still accurate.
Worked ease and accuracy in the same cycles
Ease ratings and checks of the map against the real home changed the coaching, the flow and the editor in the same rounds, so one never improved at the other’s cost. The scan went one room at a time.
How it worked
One list for every device
In September 2023, Amazon said customers had connected more than 400 million smart home devices to Alexa, and millions of them had more than 20. In the Alexa app, each device was a row in one list, found by its name.
Walk the room with the phone
A customer held up a Pro iPhone and walked one room at a time. White lines traced the walls and furniture as a small 3D model of the room grew on screen.
Depth becomes a floor plan
The LiDAR scanner measured depth as the customer walked, and software on the phone found the walls, doors, windows and furniture. Camera images were processed on the phone and not stored. Each new room joined the last at the doorway the customer chose.
Drag each device onto its room
Lights, speakers, plugs and the thermostat became pins on the plan. Beta customers and research showed that seeing status at a glance mattered, so each pin showed its device’s live state from Alexa.
Tap the map to run the home
A tap on a pin sent the command through Alexa to the light, plug or thermostat. Every device on the map works: tap one to switch it.
Drawing of the flow, from Amazon’s published descriptions.
Time to set up, as each source measured it
Launch
“Finally, no more scrolling through an endless list of devices.”The Verge, on Map View’s launch
Announced on 20 September 2023 and launched in November 2023 for customers in the United States who had signed up. At CES in January 2024, Samsung, LG and TP-Link’s Tapo showed map-based controls of their own.
What came next
On 28 October 2026, Amazon announced Alexa Home Map, a 3D successor that keeps Map View’s steps: scan each room, place each device, control it from the map. The Verge called it “a ground-up rebuild of the map view that launched in 2023.”
