Voice Experience Design: Creating an Alexa Skill for the Classroom
Research: Where is the Need, What is the Need?
Voice assistants are being used more in our society. We’ll never forget when Alexa lost her voice during the Super Bowl, right? Yet, there are many untapped uses for voice assistants. Generally, we know we can ask Alexa or Google Assistant or Siri to call someone, put a note in our calendar, or play a song. But what else can they do?
I decided to see what a voice assistant could do in education, specifically for elementary school teachers. I know several elementary school teachers and started with talking to them about it. I asked them what problems they had in the classroom and what they felt Alexa could do for them. These are the responses:
- It’s hard keeping the attention of students. A noise monitor in a classroom would be nice.
- I’d like help with the administrative side of teaching, like finding files, checking the schedule for the week, and asking for information about lessons taught during the week. It would be cool if Alexa could say things like, “Way to go!” when students answer questions correctly.
While Alexa could easily help with administrative checking or say encouraging things to students, I thought I would dig a little deeper. There’s a whole area here just waiting to be discovered by Alexa and other voice experiences.
I thought back to my own elementary education. One of my favorite teachers was my sixth grade science teacher. Everyday was fun and I learned a lot about the world in her class. Why? Because we played. Learning through play is proven to promote active understanding in children.
Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child has done a study to learn more about learning through play. They assert that:
“the ingredients of play are precisely the ones that fuel learning: in addition to promoting a state of low anxiety, play provides opportunities for novel experiences, active engagement, and learning from peers and adults” .
So, the question is: how can Alexa help promote learning through play? How about a game? There are many Alexa skills that are really fun games. How do we create a game for the classroom? I looked for educational children’s games on sites like PBS.org and various teacher aide sites. I found my state’s core standards and figured out what students need to learn in what grade. With all of this, I settled on creating a game about something I was excited to learn as a sixth grader: space. Specifically, our solar system.
Enter Spaceman Pete. He loves to play hide and seek and he’s hiding somewhere in our solar system. Your goal, as the player, is to find him. Don’t worry! He’ll send you clues about the planet he’s hiding on. But you’ll only get three clues before he wins!
Hide and Seek with Spaceman Pete: Scripting the Game
There are eight planets and therefore eight places to guess. Each planet has three clues. Of course, the player may guess the planet before the second or third clue is given, or they may not guess it at all. That adds more scripts. I ended up with twelve scripts: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Successful Guess, Didn’t Guess Correctly, Play Again, and Done Playing.
An possible game would go like this:
User: Alexa, play Hide and Seek with Spaceman Pete.
Alexa: Welcome to Hide and Seek with Spaceman Pete. Spaceman Pete is hiding…in space! It’s a big solar system, so he’ll send you clues to help you find him. You’ll have three clues and three chances to guess which planet he’s hiding on. If you can’t guess it after the third clue, he wins! Are you ready to find Spaceman Pete?
User: Yes.
Alexa: Here’s your first clue. Spaceman Pete is hiding on the hottest planet in our solar system. What planet is he hiding on?
User: Mercury
Alexa: Nope, that’s not it! Here’s another clue: he’s hiding on a planet that spins backwards. Where is Spaceman Pete?
User: Mars.
Alexa: Not quite! Here’s your final clue. The planet he’s hiding on is about the same size as the Earth. Where is Spaceman Pete?
User: Venus.
Alexa: You found him! You’ve got great deducting skills! Do you want to play again?
User: Yes.
Alexa: Okay, Spaceman Pete is hiding again! Here’s your first clue. Spaceman Pete is orbiting a planet that is really small, the smallest planet in the solar system. Which planet is he on?
User: Neptune.
Alexa: Sorry, that’s not it! Here’s another clue: he’s hiding on a planet that has no moons or rings. What planet is Spaceman Pete hiding on?
User: Venus.
Alexa: Oh, no, one more guess! Here’s your final clue. Spaceman Pete is hiding on the planet that’s the closest to the sun. Where is Spaceman Pete?
User: Mercury.
Alexa: You found him! Spaceman Pete can’t trick you! Do you want to play again?
User: Yes.
Alexa: Okay. Spaceman Pete is hiding again! Here’s your first clue: he’s hiding on the biggest planet in our solar system. Which planet is he on?
User: Jupiter.
Alexa: Right, you found him! He’s taking off to hide. How about another game?
User: No, thanks.
Alexa: Okay! Until next time!
This brings my attention to a few things. First, from a coding perspective I’ll have to figure out how to allow the same slot to be an answer multiple times. From a teaching perspective, it’s obvious that these
Testing this app, I found it was important that Alexa answer the user’s guesses in a clear and friendly way. Amazon’s Design Guide asserts this principle: “Make sure that Alexa speaks like a person, for example using contractions and avoiding jargon. This will help the user more easily understand Alexa and encourages the user to speak naturally in return.”
Determining possible utterances for each intent was difficult. There are essentially three intents: FirstGuessIntent, SecondGuessIntent, and ThirdGuessIntent. Ideally, the utterances for each would be one of the eight planets or “I don’t know.” However, there could be others. “What was the clue?” or “Ummm…”. It’s important to determine how to handle these possible answers that may create an error. The Alexa Design Guide suggests that when and error occurs, it is important to help users continue gracefully with the skill. “For use cases that aren’t yet supported, say something like “The Trivia Mania challenge can’t help you with that yet.” When the user’s statement is unintelligible, say something like “Sorry, I didn’t get that.” After handling the error, prompt the user again with the most recent question that Alexa asked. Avoid telling the user you didn’t hear or didn’t understand, because this encourages users to repeat themselves more slowly or loudly instead of rewording the request.”
Prototyping in High Fidelity
Once I scripted out some flows and wrote out the intents, utterances, and slots, I went into Sayspring to create a prototype. I found that some of the original wording in the scripts were off. For example, instead of ending each clue with variations of, “Where do you think Spaceman Pete is hiding?” I ended them all with, “Do you know where Spaceman Pete is hiding?” This was a problem for two reasons. First, ending all the prompts like that was annoyingly repetitive. Second, it was asking a yes or no question that wasn’t the information I needed. In the Alexa Design Guide, Amazon says choices need to be definitive. I want to prompt the user to guess a planet, so I need to ask them the right question.
To play with the prototype, click here:
A Test with Teachers
Finishing the prototype, it was time to test it with users. I asked a second grade teacher to test it out. She commented the following:
- This game would be hard for the whole class to play at the same time because everyone would be trying to answer at once.
- This would have to be played after a lesson on the planets.
- These are good questions, things students should know.
- Kids will want to play this because it’s Alexa, it’s new technology, so it’s naturally fun.
In response to her comments, we figured out the following:
- Since this is something that would be taught in a sixth grade class, maybe a “one-at-a-time” policy could be enforced by the teacher and the students would be responsive. This is also something that could be played in groups. The students would learn that they have to only answer when it’s they’re turn or Alexa can’t hear them and they can’t play the game.
- This game could perhaps come with supplemental material for the teacher to teach beforehand.
I also tested with another user, not a teacher or an elementary student, but young at heart. I found that she paused to think about her answer. Sometimes Alexa would re-prompt over her answer. However, when that happened, Alexa caught the answer and accepted it. The only solution I can think of for this issue is to somehow manipulate the code and allow the user more time to to answer when a clue is given.
Conclusion
The education field is relatively untouched by voice assistants. While at first it may be hard to visualize how they might be a part of the education and teaching world, they bring a lot of value. In the two weeks I researched and prototyped this skill, I realized that voice assistants offer solutions to problems as innate as the need to learn through play. Now the question is, what else can they offer? What else can they do?
Footnotes
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard
developingchild.harvard.edu
Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
