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© 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Alexa Skill Developer Tools: Build
Better Skills Faster
Paul Cutsinger
Alexa and Echo at Amazon
Amazon.com
@AlexaDevs
A L X 4 0 6
Dylan Zwick
Chief Product Officer
Pulse Labs
@PulseLabsAI

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“Conversational platforms will drive the next
big paradigm shift in how humans interact
with the digital world.”
Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018

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Tooling for each stage of the skill lifecycle
Design Build Test Launch

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Designing for voice
Design Build Test Launch

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Core ideas in visual design
• Constrained user input
• Simultaneous presentation
• Persistent data
• Text input is hard

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Voice design is different
• Unconstrained user input
• Sequential presentation
• Ephemeral data
• Text input is easy

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Visual design is constrained

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Voice design is unconstrained
Yes
Yeah
Uh huh
SureWhy not?

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Dealing with synonyms
Cat
Kitty
Tabby
Grimalkin

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Entertainment adventure skill

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I’ll have a whiskey
Give me a whiskey
Whiskey
Whiskey please
Whiskey for me
Serve up a whiskey
Pass me a whiskey
Intent
ServeDrink
Utterances and intents

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{drink} Synonyms
Whiskey
Johnnie Walker, WhistlePig Boss
Hog, Bushmills
Tequila Don Julio, Ocho
Beer
Draft, cold one, libation, brewskie,
oat soda, cerveza, barley pop
Water
H2o, drink,
still gin and tonic hold the gin
Slots and entity resolution
I’ll have a {drink}
Give me a {drink}
{drink}
{drink} please
{drink} for me
Serve up a {drink}
Pass me a {drink}

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People don’t only use one greeting
Hey!
Hi!
How’s it
going?
Hello!
Voice applications shouldn’t either!

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Random can be dangerous—Quiz skill

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Successful quiz skill:
• Stores score for the game
• Stores scores from previous games
• Stores times from previous games

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Wide top level UI, not nested menus
A
B
C
D

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Wide top level UI, not nested menus
A
B
C
D
A B C E
D

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Example: Ticket ordering skill
Main Menu
Search Near me
Recommend
Coming
Soon
Title
Time
Search
!

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Example: Food Re-Ordering Skill
Main Menu
Search
Change
Something
Change Pickup
Method
Change
Location
Place order
Change Order
Item
!

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Building for voice
Design Build Test Launch

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Skill management API and CLI

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Command line interface
$ npm install -g ask-cli

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IDE integration

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AWS CodeStar

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Testing for voice
Design Build Test Launch

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“Testing with real users, early
and often, is crucial”
Cathy Pearl, Designing Voice User Interfaces

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“To design the best UX, pay attention to what
users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims
are unreliable, as are user speculations about
future behavior. Users do not know what they
want.” Jacob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group

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Recruit testers
Rule of thumb:
The easier testers are to
recruit, the less valuable
their feedback
Difficulty to recruit
Valueoffeedback

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Onsite lab tests
Photo by Ani Kolleshi on Unsplash
• Coordination on time and
location
• Extensive pre-planning
• Artificial environment
• Expensive

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Offsite lab test
• Extensive equipment
logistics
• Hard to record the
interaction
• Data collection is tricky

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Vetted panel of user testers
Large panel of testers in
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Australia
Pulse Labs handles all coordination
and communication with testers

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Optimizing for voice
Design Build Test Launch

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© 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Remember
Design Build Test Launch
• Be adaptable
• Be contextual
• Be available
• Test early and
often
• Unit test
• Beta test with
real users – Pulse
Labs can help!
• Skill
management
API
• AWS CLI
• IDE Integration
• Track your
performance
with Alexa
analytics tools

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Alexa.design links
Design Build Test Launch
/design
/situational_design
/utterances
/synonyms
/memory
/handlers
/test
/unit_testing
/beta_testing
/pulselabs
/build
/smapi
/cli
/vscode
/codestar
/launch
/analytics

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@PaulCutsingerDylan Zwick - dylan@pulselabs.ai
Amazon Alexa
Thank you!

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