Kaetlyn Bailey

What is an Alexa skill?

An Alexa skill is like an app that you would download to your phone, however; with Alexa’s voice capabilities, she is able to use these skills to interact with humans more often through things like games, comedy, and even helpful skills that can allow you to make routines or schedules. These skills can be activated using an invocation statement and can be stopped at any time by the user by a simple “Alexa, stop”. Additionally, anyone can make an Alexa skill using blueprints which allows them to customize a new skill however they would like. This can then be published and sent to friends or just be used on their Alexa device.

The Sick Burns Skill

For my skill, Sick Burns, I decided to develop an Alexa skill that delivers roasts. The objective of this skill is for Alexa to say funny “burns” to people when they say something like “Alexa, give me a sick burn”. The purpose of this skill is to be funny and serve as a conversation starter between friends and Alexa. This is not to be confused with being rude or mean and would need to be designed as such with a clear distinction within the use of the skill. This skill contains 15 different burns for people to go through. This skill is meant to be humorous fun and over time I can add more roasts so that users can have different roasts to hear when they open this skill again.

Its Creation

The sick burns skill was created using blueprints. I wanted to create a skill that was funny for users and lighthearted to where no one would get hurt in the process. This came from my love of humor and sarcasm. To begin this skill, I began to research different ways to approach people with comedy and found that it’s best to leave out personal targets and insecurities which is why the roasts included in my skill do not apply to one person, however; they could apply to anyone and everyone. From this, I developed 15 different phrases that Alexa would say to the user of my skill that I thought people would get a kick out of. She additionally uses funny replies to make people continue using the app and even when they close the app she gives on the final roast in hopes that they will continue to use the skill later on. I refined it after having close friends use the skill on their Alexa devices. A few of the original roasts didn’t make the cut as they seemed to be a bit too power punching and these were replaced with more lighthearted and funny comebacks.

Analysis

My Usability study consisted of seven questions including: Did you find this skill to be humourous? Did you think the statements were appropriate for a burns app? Did you find it easy to use this skill? Would this be a skill you would use again? How much time on average did you spend on this skill? Do you think it needs more or less content? Would you recommend this app to others around your age? Please leave any other thoughts or feedback you feel is necessary. On average most colleagues found this to be a fun skill that they would recommend to others but would not use it again as it would have the same content. Colleagues also stated that there needed to be more content and slower run-throughs of the statements. For the future, I would add more content and hopefully alert the user that there has been an update in content so that the user would come back and use the skill once again. I would also add commas to the statements to have them run through slower so that people could catch the entire statement the first time.

Reflections

I think the most difficult thing about this project for me was that I needed to come up with content that wouldn’t hurt people’s feelings and also be funny at the same time since not everyone has the same humor. I also found the pacing of Alexa to be difficult. For example, putting my burns in the Alexa skill correctly made them go a bit too fast to others which means I would need to add commas in random places to slow it down. I am most proud that people actually laughed and had fun with my skill since that was the entire point of it. I believe I will continue to add to this skill when I come up with more funny comebacks that way if people in the class, or my friends want to hear new content they can. It also helps me show off my funny sayings to others. I had a lot of fun with this project overall.

Demonstration

Usability Study Videos

My VUI

The VUI I created for assignment three was a morning routine that my Amazon Alexa device would start each morning. This Vui specifically reminded me to take my medicine, wash my face, eat my breakfast, feed my cat, and prompted me to do a meditation to begin the day on a good foot. She also reminded me that I am worth it and that I would have an awesome day. This routine I created was so that I or other users could start the day on a positive note and would be reminded of the most important things each morning. I believe this is a crucial part of our day-to-day life. Even if you don’t have a VUI prompting you to do all of these small tasks, it is important to hear that we are worth it and have meaning and to make sure we take care of ourselves first thing in the morning. I try my best currently to remind myself of these small tasks and sometimes forget, but I always feel better when I remember these small things because I get off to a good start to the day.

Creation of this VUI

To create this VUI I began by what I need to remember each morning and what things I need to remind myself of for my mental health. As someone who struggles with mental health, some of these small tasks, like taking medicine, can seem utmost impossible some days, however, if I go without or forget to take them, it is even worse. This is something my Alexa currently reminders me to do each morning when I wake up so I made sure to include this in my morning routine for this assignment. After gathering what I thought to be the most important reminders and tasks, I set out to figure a timeline for Alexa to prompt these tasks or reminders. Each morning Alexa tells me the weather, so it made sense for that to go first. I also had her remind me of the appointments and work I needed to get done today. These were pressing issues, so they went close to the beginning as well. Moving forward I had Alexa remind me to take my medicine which was followed by a meditation. I do meditations daily so that I can continue to work on my mental health even on days I don’t have therapy and especially on hard days. I had my medicine reminder go first because sometimes I find it hard to take it but after the meditation is easier to do.  I settled on having Alexa talk to me just as a person would because to me, I feel more comfortable feeling like I am talking to a person rather than a robot. Also, since I am home alone a lot I talk to Alexa frequently anyways, which made it a bit easier to formulate her responses.

Challenges and Sucesses

It became easy to create the vui when I decided on content, timeline, and speech patterns. I am most proud of the fact that I completed a whole meditation with Alexa. It was hard at first to see how our responses would go since you don’t typically talk through meditation, but it helped lower my anxiety after I completed the meditation with the talking. It didn’t seem like much of an issue to talk about during the meditation after I actually did it. The most challenging thing about creating this vui was to figure out what content needed to be included. Since I struggle with mental health it became hard for me to pick the most important parts to focus on since I deem all of them important. I had to pick what I struggled with most and then use Alexa to help me focus on those things, which overall worked better than if I had just deemed everything too important which would have taken too long to complete as just a morning routine and would cause a lack of focus on more important tasks.