How we created Amazon Alexa skills in less than 1 hour without coding?

Published in

Lean Prototyping

4 min readDec 6, 2017

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On December 6th, 2017 we had Prototyping voice interface event as a part of Berlin Lean Prototyping meetup group.

Vasili Shynkarenka, founder of storylineio

In this event, Vasili Shynkarenka, Co-Founder @thestorylineio, Talked about how a nontechnical person can create Amazon Alexa skill quickly using Storyline without any code.

Design Challenge

You are a part of the Berlin tourism team, How would enhance Berlin travel experience with voice interface?

As a part of Lean Prototyping meetup event, we had a session to practice with prototyping tool(in this meetup with the storyline). Meetup participants created possible solutions using storyline in a team of 2–3. We followed the Steps to validate low fidelity voice interface prototype.

1. Ideation

Paper and Pen is still the powerful prototyping tool and way to sketch out ideas quickly. we spent 10 minutes on exploring the challenge. Each team answered following questions.

a. Who (target audience, someone using VUI),
b. Location (home, public place, work)
c. Emotional state(hurry/ tired)
d. Paint points(issues with existing system)

2. Storyboarding

Once we had a better understanding of the context/challenge, each team created the storyboard of the user & the Machine using sticky notes. Map out the script with sticky notes. we spent 15 minutes on creating a storyboard.

User Testing

Each listed the Machine commands from step 2, followed the Ben Sauer’s voice interface user testing technique( Test Your Voice App Idea in Less Than An Hour). Each team invited other team members for testing their prototype. we spent 10 minutes for user testing.

Storyline

Each team summarised what commands work/what doesn’t, started creating voice interface using storyline. we spent 20 minutes on creating voice interface.

Pitching

Each team presented their solutions from the storyline and explained their approach.

Voice Interface Prototype pitch session

Link to solutions

Thanks

Thanks Vasili Shynkarenka for the great introduction to storyline & juLien Fredonie Infosys Innovation Fabrik Berlin for supporting us & providing the venue, drinks & snacks, @krissifritsche, from Amazon for T-shirts & swags.

Summary of the meetup event

Lessons learned

We had a fun event, collaborating, storyboarding, user testing & building Amazon Alexa skill using storyline.
Testing for voice interface is more fun than testing Web design.
Designing voice interface is hard, challenging & fun.
Based on the feedback & I will be hosting more hackathon style Amazon Alexa skill event for nontechnical people.

References

Follow us on Twitter @Berlinlean & Anil Kumar to get more information on Lean Prototyping & for upcoming events visit here Berlin Lean Prototyping meetup page.