Intermediate Programming @Woodbury

Intro to Alexa

Alexa cartoon

Creating an Alexa Skill with NodeJS

Overview

  • What is Alexa? Amazon marketing video
  • Echo simulated online

Language Definitions

Programming –> Alexa

Alexa = Computer

Skill = App

Intent = Function

Utterance = call a function

slot = variable

Tutorial

We are going to use Amazon’s tutorial on Building a How-To Skill

Tutorial page for Amazon Alexa Skills Kit sample Skills

Technical Overview

  • Alexa Skills Kit Developer Console: Overview
  • Amazon Alexa Skills Kit - Learn
  • Alexa Gaming Skills site

Consider

  • Brainstorm your Alexa how-to skill
  • Concept
    • What are you teaching?
    • What questions will people have? List all of these questions and their answers
    • Does voice assistance suit this?
  • Set-up your development environment
    • Sign up for all needed accounts
    • Amazon AWS Lambda to host your code/functions
    • Alexa console to build your Voice User Interface
  • Begin building your Skill

Bonus: Interactive Story-Games