With finals coming to an end and graduations happening for some, being a college student these past few weeks was no easy task. Nevertheless, students around the world brought their innovations to life by participating in our Hack-Your-World with Amazon Alexa contest. This contest challenged students to build new and innovative Alexa skills focused on either sustainability or accessibility use cases. Here were the prompts:

• Sustainability: Build an Alexa skill that promotes a sustainable lifestyle and empowers Alexa users to make a change in the way they live.
• Accessibility: Build an Alexa skill that makes life on your university campus easier for those who may not experience it the way you do.

All of the submissions we reviewed were innovative and creative making the selection process tough. Using the contest judging criteria to review entries, we are pleased to announce the winners.

The Winners

Sustainability Challenge winners:

Winner #1: Charging Stations by Vishnoukumaar Sivaji from the University of Texas, Dallas. Charging Stations is a skill that allows you to search for the nearest electric vehicle charging stations based on an address or Zip Code.

Winner #2: Captain Planet - Your Recycling Assistant by Bhushit Agarwal from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Captain Planet is a skill that creates awareness for recycling by offering users a way to engage, learn, and make an impact in the way they lead their lives.

Accessibility Challenge winners:

Winner #1: Bus Times by David Friedman from the University of California Davis. Bus Times is a skill that can inform its users of upcoming buses near your location in a hands-free way.

Winner #2: TextbookCheck by Jorge Estrada from the California State Polytechnic University, Ponoma. TextbookCheck is a skill that queries Amazon and Ebay by ISBN for the most affordable price of a textbook.

MindSumo will notify each the winners of this contest and the first 25 eligible submissions to receive their prizes.

A big thank you to all of the participants who spent the time to build and submit their creative Alexa skills for our contest. If you haven’t done so, give these skills a try, follow us on Twitter, and check out our Alexa Education page for news and updates.

Alexa <3s Students

If you are as energized as we are about the shift to voice user interfaces, get started with Alexa today. From training the next voice designers and developers to reinventing life on campus or in the classroom, the possibilities with voice are endless. Check out our Alexa Education page for more information.

About the Alexa Skills Kit

The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) enables developers to build capabilities, called skills, for Alexa. ASK is a collection of self-service APIs, documentation, tools, and code samples that make it fast and easy for anyone to add skills to Alexa. Developers have built more than 12,000 skills with ASK. Explore the stories behind some of these innovations, then start building your own skill. Once you publish your skill, mark the occasion with an Alexa dev shirt. Quantities are limited.