Editor's Note: As of May 21, 2020, the Baby Activity Skill API will no longer be available. We recommend you use the custom skill APIs to implement baby activity logging for your customers.​

Today, we are excited to announce the Baby Activity Skill API, a new skill type that enables you to build Alexa skills that help customers keep track of baby activities simply by asking Alexa. For example, a customer can log the time of the latest diaper change and Alexa can recite that information back to the customer when asked. The API, available in the U.S., includes a set of interfaces that make the skill building process much easier so that you can build Alexa skills for your baby care apps and devices more quickly. Currently, we offer Weight, Sleep, DiaperChange, and InfantFeeding interfaces, and plan on adding more use cases in the future.

Increase Usage with the Power of Voice

Consistency is critical for customers who are looking to log their baby related activities. However, it isn’t always easy for parents and caregivers to log consistently and in a timely manner – they may be tired from barely sleeping the night before, or their hands may be tied up with the latest mess. For these reasons, you may have customers who have downloaded your app to log baby activity but don’t return after the first few sessions.

“We added Alexa control to key portions of our Pregnancy and early childhood apps which facilitates hands free recording of vital information that would otherwise be missed. In addition to helping us easily add features that further our mission to improve the health of families, it has been great to see developers and testers so excited about the technology and the role they play on the project." Says Keith Jaeger, Chief Technology Officer for Wildflower Health.

With the Baby Activity Skill API, you can build Alexa skills and that enable your customers to easily log and query activity information using just their voice. Voice is a powerful tool that increases the accessibility of your service. It can help increase consistent input and make your service more valuable, increasing usage and retention of customers.

Here are some sample utterances:

User: Alexa, track a dirty diaper change for Jane Alexa
User: Alexa, log a 3 ounce bottle for Jane
User: Alexa, start nursing from the left
User: Alexa, when was Jane’s last diaper change?

“With this new capability, parents will be able to easily record events hands free and have rapid access to the information. Our initial tests show an increase in engagement from the parents who use the Baby Activity skill for Alexa.” says Xavier Launay, Founder & CEO at Baby Connect.

How the Baby Activity Skill API Works

We created the new skill type to minimize development needed and ensure a great customer experience.

"Implementing the Baby Activity Skills API was straightforward, and provides a lot of value to customers by making it easier for them to interact with our skill. The API does of the heavy lifting in handling the user interaction model, so that our code became very straightforward to implement." Says Ken DeLong, VP of Software Engineering at Hatch Baby.

The interfaces describe messages that you can use to develop Alexa skills for your baby activity logging apps and devices. We have data management directives for adding activities, timer directives for timing a session, and query directives for asking questions about the data.

Try the Baby Activity Skill API Today

Review our documentation to get started. We are excited for you to leverage the power of voice to further increase the value of your services for your customers.