Design Your Skill
Designing for voice is different from visual design. Your design approach must consider voice-first interactions adapted to the way users express their intent naturally through speech. For Alexa-enabled devices with a screen, you can enhance the voice interaction with complementary visual design.
Design for the voice interaction model
Every Alexa skill has a voice interaction model that defines the words and phrases that users can say to Alexa to make the skill do what they want. For details, see About Voice Interaction Models.
If you develop a skill by using the pre-built voice interaction model, Amazon has designed the set of utterances for each skill type. Consult the Alexa Design Guide for other design considerations, such as, best practices for developing skills for children, accessibility, and in-skill purchasing.
If you build a custom skill, the first step is to design the voice interaction model. You might design a request-response dialog, use a conversational model, or use a mixed approach. For details about how to design a custom voice interaction model, see the Alexa Design Guide. The design guide offers you best practices to design the interaction model, adding visuals to your skill, add voice to apps, develop skills for children, and more. You can also use the Skill Flow Builder to design and test narrative-driven Alexa skills.
Additional resources
Use the following additional resources to help you learn how to design an Alexa skill.
Concepts and procedures
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen – The four design best practices that are unique to voice-first interactions.
- Amazon Alexa Brand External – Guidelines about how to adhere to Amazon Alexa marketing and branding with your skill.
Blog posts
- 4 Principles of Conversational Voice Design
- Why Voice Design Matters: We Don't Speak the Way We Write
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Build Adaptable Voice-First Interactions
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Individualize Your Entire Interaction
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Make Your Voice-First Interactions Accessible
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for the Screen: Talk with Your Customers, Not at Them
- Build Advanced Alexa Skills: Confirm What Customers Want with Dialog Management
- 6 Dialog Management Resources to Build Advanced Alexa Skills
- Things Every Alexa Skill Should Do: Pass the One-Breath Test
Videos, podcasts, and webinars
- Alexa, what's an utterance?
- Alexa, what are slots?
- Alexa, what's a launch phrase?
- Alexa, what's an invocation name?
- Voice Design 101: An Introduction
- Voice Design 101
- Advanced Voice Design
- Building for Voice vs. Screens
- Building Voice-First Life Hacks
- Design for Voice in 3 Steps - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
- How to Understand Intents - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
- How To Interact with Alexa - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
- How to Simplify Your Responses - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
- How to Choose Projects for Voice - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
- How to Ask Clear Questions - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide
Twitch streams
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Steve Tingiris from Dabble Lab – Insights into how to build a community, share knowledge, and innovate with voice.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Justina Nguyen from Dashbot – 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 how to build a voice-first business.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Dustin Coates from Algolia – A discussion about voice search, community, and how to maintain 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 how to bring musical content to people through voice.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Nick Schwab from Invoked Apps – Insights into the skill-building process.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Huy Nguyen ChefSteps – A discussion about how to enable voice and voice technology in the kitchen.
- Talking #VoiceFirst with Jan König from Jovo – A discussion about how to design for voice first.