Quick Reference: Design Alexa Skills for Voice First
The following resources help you learn how to design and build skills for voice.
Concepts and procedures
- Alexa Voice Design Guide – A guide that describes how to build an engaging voice experience for your skill.
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen – The four design best practices that are unique to voice-first interactions.
Blog posts
- 4 Principles of Conversational Voice Design – Some core principles in conversational voice design and some advanced design skill-building tips to create natural voice experiences.
- Why Voice Design Matters: We Don’t Speak the Way We Write – Some key points about voice design from a discussion with Oren Jacob, co-founder and CEO of PullString.
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Build Adaptable Voice-First Interactions – A discussion of how you can build your voice-first interaction in a way that enables users to speak to Alexa in their own words.
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Individualize Your Entire Interaction – A discussion of how to individualize the voice experience through personalization.
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Make Your Voice-First Interactions Accessible – A discussion of how to design your voice user interface in a way that reduces cognitive load on your customers.
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Talk with Your Customers, Not at Them – A discussion of how to make voice interactions relatable to your customers.
- Build Advanced Alexa Skills: Confirm What Customers Want with Dialog Management – A discussion of creating a seamless confirmation experience with dialog management.
- 6 Dialog Management Resources to Build Advanced Alexa Skills – A list of tutorials, sample skills, and blog posts to get started with dialog management.
Videos, podcasts, and webinars
- Alexa, what's an utterance? – An explanation of utterances.
- Alexa, what are slots? – An explanation of slots.
- Alexa, what's a launch phrase? – An explanation of launch phrases.
- Alexa, what's an invocation name? – An explanation of invocation names.
- Voice Design 101: An Introduction – The fundamentals of how to design a rich voice user interface.
- Voice Design 101 – A webinar about how designing for voice differs from designing for the web or mobile.
- Advanced Voice Design – A webinar about how to build a sophisticated skill that enables users to engage in multi-turn conversations, including how to apply advanced features like dialog management, entity resolution, state management, session persistence, and context maintenance.
- Building for Voice vs. Screens – A webinar about how to reimagine a multimodal skill experience from a voice-first perspective.
- Building Voice-First Life Hacks – A webinar about how to build standout skills that make everyday tasks faster, easier, and more delightful via voice.
- Design for Voice in 3 Steps - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide – The three steps in planning your voice user interface.
- How to Understand Intents - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide – The fundamentals of how intents work when you build a voice user interface.
- How To Interact with Alexa - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide – The building block of an Alexa skill: how to interact with Alexa.
- How to Simplify Your Responses - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide – A description of how to simplify Alexa's responses when building your skill.
- How to Choose Projects for Voice - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide – A discussion about how to choose a project that makes thing faster, easier, and more fun with voice.
- How to Ask Clear Questions - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide – A discussion about how to ask users clear questions when building a conversational user interface.
Twitch streams
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Steve Tingiris from Dabble Lab – Some insights into building a community, sharing knowledge, and voice innovation.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Justina Nguyen from Dashbot – Some analytics and constant improvement suggestions.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Rebecca Evanhoe from Mobiquity Inc – A discussion about voice design patterns.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Bahubali Shete from Klove Chef – A discussion about voice first and technology in the kitchen.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Brandon Kaplan from Skilled Creative – A discussion about building a voice-first business.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Dustin Coates from Algolia – A discussion about voice search, community, and maintaining context.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Adva Levin from Pretzel Labs – A discussion about design, personas, and skills for kids.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Tahsim – A discussion about bringing musical content to people through voice.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Nick Schwab from Invoked Apps – Some insights into the skill-building process.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Huy Nguyen ChefSteps – A discussion about voice enabling and voice technology in the kitchen.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Jan König from Jovo – A discussion about designing for voice first.