I have been working on Alexa Skills since November 2017 and have devoted most of my time for this. I am also an active participant in hackathons and tech events. So, when HackerEarth announced it was going to host India’s first ever Alexa Skills Hackathon, it was kind of a dream come true — a competition where I would have a chance to demonstrate whatever I had learned in the last few months. I haven’t been this excited about any other event.

Learning and building skills on Alexa is quite easy. There are thousands of developers and also many people who don’t come from a programmatic background making amazing skills for Alexa every day. When I started learning about Alexa, there weren’t many resources or tutorials to follow. So, I had to take the tough route, asking questions on various Slack channels and had only a limited number of examples/issues I could refer to on discussion forums.

But in a very short span, the Alexa team has come up with loads of learning content in the form of different blogs, many interesting video tutorials in episodic format on Twitch, regular workshops and dev days which are held around the world. Doesn’t matter what your experience with programming is, there are lots of tools for non-tech people, and for techies, you can make an Alexa skill in whichever language you are comfortable with. I have also curated a list of resources which has links to various tutorials, blogs, designing and prototyping platforms, and other valuable resources related to Alexa Skills Development – https://github.com/TheDreamSaver/awesome-alexa.

Building Alexa Skills is easy, like any other application development you just need to get the idea of the application you are building and start building it. You will face different issues and every challenge you face will teach you new concepts throughout the way.

I was so excited to showcase my abilities that I submitted not one but three skills for this hackathon. I was planning to submit a couple more but couldn’t complete them within the time frame.

My prize winning skill, The Ganga Quest, is a non-linear storytelling game, where the player’s choices can change the outcome of the story. In this enchanting decision tree-based game, the player gets the opportunity to begin his voyage down the Ganges in search of the missing book of the Panchatantra while having to make many decisions that could lead either to progress or to disappointment.

My other submission, Science Wizard, which also won the Alexa Popular Choice Award in this competition, is an attempt to boost science learning with hands-on activities, quizzes, debate prompts, research topics, and help with science formulas — all combined in one Alexa skill!

The Ganga Quest is an interactive decision tree-based storytelling game. The interactive game increases the thinking ability based on a cause-and-effect sequence. Good music across various steps of the adventure and different user responses leading to different paths in the game help create a compelling story through decision making. In future updates for this game, I will be looking to add more educational and instructive content from The Panchatantra to design other decision-based paths.

It was an amazing experience participating in this hackathon. HackerEarth was crystal clear about all the rules and guidelines associated with the competition. The HackerEarth staff was also very supportive and replied to all the queries and discussions promptly.

Just because there is no GUI involved, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to focus on user experience and design aspects. While developing Alexa Skills, remember that people are embracing voice-first user interfaces because they are natural, conversational, and user-centric, and because of that designing for voice is quite different from designing for screens.

There are several unique design patterns which apply to VUI. For instance, while designing for the screen you need to be consistent with your approach, but for voice interactions you need to show variability in your skill’s responses. Otherwise, the user experience will get affected negatively in the long run. Personalize the responses to surprise returning users. You also need to make sure you design the interaction before getting down to code, keeping in mind that your skill needs to be talking with them and not at them. The best way is to design the dialogue for a happy user experience before you start coding.

Also, remember to give voice and interactive content and your skill’s complex code and features equal importance. I have worked on about 20 skills till now, and the main thing I learned is that no matter how complex your skill is, the user won’t be returning to use your skill unless he/she finds it interactive and engaging.

Participating in this hackathon and winning it motivated me a lot to continue spending my time developing voice-first applications. I am looking forward to building more valuable and engaging Alexa Skills and being a part of this paradigm shift, which is the next major disruption in computing.

It was my first time participating in an online hackathon on HackerEarth, and it was an awesome and seamless experience. I’m looking forward to participating in more Amazon Alexa Hackathons and other hackathons at HackerEarth.