The author, a developer, initially bought an Amazon Echo on a whim and soon realized that they wanted to use voice interaction instead of typing for everyday tasks. They discovered that their new employer's service, Algolia, was a good fit for their skills and noticed that they were repeating the same code snippets over and over. Inspired by InstantSearch.js, they wondered if there might be something similar that could connect Algolia with the Alexa Skills Kit. The author found that Algolia's features such as typo tolerance, synonyms, and search relevancy made it well-suited for voice-enabled assistants like Alexa. They created a JavaScript library called the Algolia Alexa Skills Kit Adapter to simplify the integration process, allowing developers to focus on creating intuitive user interfaces instead of tedious setup.