The Impossible Alexa British History Quiz
Only 1.5% of Alexa users achieved a perfect score on the quiz
I know that multiple choice tests are supposed to be easy. In school, everyone’s favorite type of exam only required you to shade in a box, or putting a check-mark next to a letter.
Multiple choice is also the easiest way to present trivia using voice interfaces such as Alexa — but I’ve created a quiz that is very challenging with the Alexa British History Quiz.
Why Build It? Alexa Developers Get Free T-shirts!
When Alexa was recently introduced to the UK, I decided to publish a quiz for our friends across the pond, and expand the broader intellect of the user community. Okay, and there was this really cool free t-shirt giveaway from Dean Bryen and his UK team of AWS Evangelists.
To balance out the simple multiple-choice aspect of the quiz, I determined to make the difficulty level of the questions challenging. So I studied up on Royal history, reading up on some famous Britons, and got the skill published.
Initial Launch Successful, But…
Initial feedback was great and a few people thankfully took the time to provide feedback giving me a great measure of success.
But then a few weeks later, it all changed with this feedback.
BOOM! My prized five-star rating was gone, and there was the implication that the answers for the quiz could easily be memorized. How could this be? Up until then I was really on a roll, but the usage of the skill plummeted with the lower rating, and the presentation was pushed down in the skill store. Below is the usage chart showing the ascent and fall.
Back to the Books
Okay, I admit it, the feedback was valid. I started out the skill with a MVP of just ten questions and I had lots of intentions of adding more quickly after the launch and just hadn’t gotten around to it. Enough excuses — I cracked open Wikipedia and went about writing more questions. Shakespeare, The Battle of Hastings, Margaret Thatcher, William the Conqueror — all would find their way into my efforts expanding the portfolio of questions.
The Christmas Surge — or was it Boxing Day?
Leading up to the holidays, I was curious if there would be a big wave of Alexa usage as Echo’s, Tap’s, and Dot’s got stuffed into stockings, and people enjoy a few days off. Christmas came, and much to my delight, there was a tremendous spike in usage of the skill, giving a great opportunity to reassess the difficulty level with the expanded library of questions.
The quiz was taken over two thousand times in the past few days — and only 33 have gotten a perfect score (1.5%). BOOM!
What’s Your Answer?
So if you’re up for the challenge and have an Alexa, please give it a try — it’s called British History Quiz, and available in both the US and UK skill stores.
I’ll give you a sample of the difficulty level. Here is a question that has stumped a stunning 82% of those attempting the quiz.
Q: Who gave royal charter status to the University of Cambridge in 1231?
- King John
- King Henry III
- King Edward I
- King Edward II
Remember, keep in mind that it’s a multiple choice, so a blind guess would give you a 25% chance in getting it correct. Enjoy!
Also, for those of you interested in how to add metrics to your Alexa skill so you can track details like quiz scores, check out the following post on Hackster.io including source code.
A Cloud Guru Thinks This Skill is Historic!
If you are interested in developing your own Alexa custom skill, A Cloud Guru has great courses available which cover all the core AWS services, including Alexa development.
Terren Peterson is an experienced technology executive with over twenty years of experience in consulting, start-up, and large corporate environments. He is currently the VP of Cloud Engineering for the Retail and Direct Bank Business at Capital One.
Terren is currently developing interactive voice applications using the Alexa platform. He has created multiple Alexa skills. Most recently, he integrated Alexa Voice Service with a Raspberry Pi to create Roxie, the voice-activated pitching machine that won first place in the Best ASK with Raspberry Pi segment of Alexa’s Internet of Voice Challenge on Hackster.io. Terren is now experimenting with the analytics capabilities of Alexa to understand and improve skill usage.
Terren holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was the founder of the Digital Campus Lab for Capital One at the UIUC Research Park, and serves on the board of the Hoeft Technology & Management Program. Terren also holds both Architect and Developer AWS Certifications.
