Steve Bowden - Alexa Presentation - Why I build Alexa Skills

Why I build Alexa skills
Steve Bowden

o Background
o Typical Alexa Skill workflow
o Why building Skills is so rewarding
o Ideas and use cases
o Questions
Overview
Why I build Alexa Skills – Steve Bowden – bowdencloud.com

o Project manager who learned about cloud and code in 2016
o Began testing Alexa platform mid 2017
o Published ‘Mighty Trivia – a guessing game for kids’ in Dec 2017
Won $5,000 USD in Kids Skill hackathon
o Published ‘Start Nagging Me’ in Mar 2018
Won $5,000 USD in Life Hacks hackathon
o Now have 15 Skills in the store and tons of Alexa swag ;)
Background

Skill delivery workflow
Ideate Design Architect Develop Test Publish Maintain
o Typical end-to-end lifecycle
o Applies to any project size

Skill delivery workflow
General idea
Invocation flow
Check other skills
Detailed idea
Write script
Optimize script
Design intents
Allocate slots
Create persona
Create in Alexa
dev console (one
language only)
Design data
structures and
configs
Set up AWS
infrastructure
- DynamoDB
- Lambda (6sec)
- S3
- CloudFront
- KMS
- IAM
Write or import
event handler
Test the handler
from Alexa
Console Testing
Tool
Build out
functions and log
every step to
CloudWatch
Tidy up SSML,
cards and display
outputs
Test in
Developer
Console (very
fast)
Copy request
payload for
major bugs into
Lambda testing
module
Test on device (if
you have one)
Optimize images
using online
tools
Create icon
(check out the
royalty free
sources)
Add other
supported
languages (copy
paste json model
into each locale)
Write description
and copy into
other locales
Watch analytics
and logs
Connect AWS
ElasticSearch
Service if traffic
is high to
visualize activity
Make updates
based on
feedback and
analysis
Ideate Design Architect Develop Test Publish Maintain

Why building Skills is so
rewarding

Test out your killer app idea!
Why it is rewarding
THIS IS
A TOTAL
GAME
CHANGER

Test out your killer app idea!
o Full end-to-control
o Make decisions
o Do production fixes
o Real customer interactions
o Real analytics and learnings
Why it is rewarding

Perks
Why it is rewarding (cont.)
MONEY FOR JAM

Perks
o A hobby that has paid many bills
o Usage payments from the Alexa fund
o AWS credits = low overhead
o Monthly developer promotions for swag and prizes
o Chance to win big $$ and get free promotion in hackathons

Self education
DO I HAVE
THE RIGHT
SKILLS?

Self education
o AWS! AWS! AWS!
Lambda, Polly, DynamoDB, Lex, S3, CloudFront, API GW, Transcribe, CloudWatch, ElasticSearch, IAM, KMS
o Having a machine learning skillset
Natural Language Processing, predictive or image processing
o Becoming a capable Voice User Interface (VUI) designer
o Home automation – great for tinkering
o The Slack community in the Devpost Alexa hackathons is terrific

Multimodal
Under-used features
DÉJÀ VU?

Multimodal
o Incredible user experience
o Growing segment
o Adaptive output is inevitable, just like responsive design in web
Under-used features

Game Engine and Gadget API
Under-used features

Game Engine and Gadget API
o Allows in session non-voice invocations of your Skill
o Primarily used to capture Echo button input
o Can be used in real-time gaming
o Generate parallel processes that can call back into an active session
Under-used features

Monetization – In Skill Purchases (ISP)
Under-used features
Alexa, tell Cat Books to buy
a summary of Fish Tails by
Whisker McClaw

Monetization – In Skill Purchases (ISP)
o A very smooth way to sell a product
o Amazon handles the transaction and returns the user to your skill
o Marketing Skills finally makes sense!
Embed analytics, monitor return on investment, experiment and iterate
o If you already have premium web content, consider porting it into Alexa
Under-used features

CanFulfillIntentRequest and voice discovery
Under-used features
Alexa, how do I
train my alpaca

CanFulfillIntentRequest and voice discovery
o Alexa is getting smarter, people are asking more of her
o Invoke your skill with a generic intent that was spoken to Alexa
o Natural way to interact with customers, “Alexa, do XYZ”
Not like “Alexa, launch <skill>”, “Alexa, ask <skill> to do XYZ”
o Web search engines are already doing this
o US-Only at the moment, great time to enter
Under-used features

Finance – customers are interested
Areas for improved Skills
Alexa, please
sort out my
finances

Finance – customers are interested
o Lessons learned from ‘Bill Tracker’ Skill
Frictionless vs progressive VUI, strong opinions, some very loyal users, still not much in the store
o Overcoming the ‘dev in the middle’ dilemma
Look at getting basic permissions like status checks and shopping cart only
o Connecting data services for finance benefit
Price information, current discounts, coupons, news feeds and podcast alerts

Brands – take your position

Brands – take your position
o It is early days to test features and their effectiveness
o Use multimodal design and establish a persona to ‘look’ and ‘sound’ good
o Produce official fresh content regularly
o Use account linking and offer real functions

Extending Alexa’s Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Alexa, its time to up
your game

Extending Alexa’s Artificial Intelligence (AI)
o Alexa is a device used by millions collecting speech as structured data
o Your backend processes data and returns an action or message
o Your Skill can learn about the customer and evolve it’s VUI
o Your Skill can allow users to train it
o With account linking, your skill could connect to customer data
sources that provide context for better AI decisions
There is ML capability in AWS that can be used to support intelligent and relevant interactions

Kids Skills – still early days
“I like nonsense; it wakes
up the brain cells.”
Dr. Seuss

Kids Skills – still early days
o Only in a handful of countries
o Starting to become saturated, previously get high organic discovery
o Customer base is constantly refreshing
o If you have kids then build to help them learn and reduce screen time
o Verbal communication develops faster than literacy
Target audiences of lower literacy with experiences that needed higher literacy skills (e.g. trivia)

Social Networking, Matchmaking
The cheeseburger
was amazing!

Social Networking, Matchmaking
o ‘Social Network’ Skill went crazy over Dec-Jan (approx. 1000 activations)
o ‘Matchmaker’ was for Valentines Day, but has since been quite active
o Customers are looking for these types of Skills
o Make something awesome and it could grow fast!

Session authentication and website / user linking
So close, but so far...

Session authentication and website / user linking
o Anonymous linking of an Alexa session with a browser session
Easy in sandbox, but hard in real world to get the handshake right for security, privacy and usability
o Using other people’s Echo devices to control or share something of yours
I’ve made inroads with voicesignin.com
o Connecting users anonymously with pairing codes
I’ve attempted this with the skill ‘Social Network’
o Opens up new user experiences

Omnipresence, including household screens
Future use cases
Have you seen this
cat?

Omnipresence, including household screens
o Ability to have context, awareness and deliver content to nearby screens for
elaboration
o Alexa needs to know where in the house you are and the nearest screen
o Household screens need to connect to an Alexa media stream on demand
o Devices need to know why you invoked them without being told
Future use cases

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
Future use cases

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
o Hands are occupied in VR
o Voice can be a way to control menus
o Alexa Skills could provide a consistent interface for these instructions
o Stay in touch with the outside world (can't use mobile)
o Augmented Reality glasses can act as an output device for data
Future use cases

Frictionless VUI – the ‘to be’ state for Voice Assistants
Future use cases
I was expecting a
number…

Frictionless VUI – the ‘to be’ state for Voice Assistants
o Removing unnecessary steps and confirmations from interaction
o Storing the customer’s dialog preferences
o Don’t make customers repeat themselves
o Handle complex utterance profiles
o Smart use of entity resolution and slot elicitation
o Backward compatibility for customers who prefer rigid VUI
Future use cases

Kitchen assistant
Future use cases
I’ve got your back

Kitchen assistant
o A Skill that can talk you from start through to the end of a cook
o Like an in-car GPS does for driving
o Nowhere near a solution yet
o Requires significant context awareness
o Needs to understand existing kitchen inventory
o Update plans based on customer status
o Factor in kitchen appliance differences
Future use cases

Thankyou
Steve Bowden
bowdencloud.com

Steve Bowden - Alexa Presentation - Why I build Alexa Skills

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