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VOICE COMPUTING

THE NEXT DIGITAL DISRUPTION

11 Aug 2017 / Prasanna Veerapandi & Cjin Pheow Lee

© 2017 National University of Singapore. All Rights Reserved

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Evolution of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

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HCI Evolution Timeline

1890

s

1930

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1960

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1980

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1990

s

201

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PUNCH CARD

KEYBOARD PEN

TOUCHMOUSE

VOICE

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1890s - Punch Card

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1930s - Keyboard

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1960s - Mouse

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1980s - Pen

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1990s - Touch

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2015 - Voice

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2017 and beyond

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Introducing Alexa

Alexa is an intelligent personal assistantdeveloped by Amazon, made popular by the

Amazon Echo and the Amazon Echo Dot devices developed by Amazon Lab126. It is capable of

voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and

other real time information, such as news. Alexa can also control smart devices using itself as a home

automation system.

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Alexa Skills

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8 Alexa Skills by StackUp Community and Counting

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Amazon Alexa Skill Promo

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/alexa-developer-skill-promotion

Terms and Conditions apply.

Publish a Skill by 31st August 2017Get an Echo Dot & Dev Swag

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Building Blocks of an Alexa Custom Skill

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Intents

Intents represent what users can ask your skill to do. Your skill might help plan a trip, get a status, tell a joke, or attack a monster — these are intents.

A skill for planning a trip might have five intents, such as PlanATripIntent, BookTheTripIntent, StopIntent, CancelIntent, and HelpIntent.

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Sample Utterances

An utterance is what a person says to Alexa that invokes an intent. Utterances are made

up of keyword commands, natural speech sounds like filler words, and slots for

information that varies. One of the most important aspects of designing a voice

experience is defining the range of what people might say.

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Sample utterances corresponding to PlanATripIntent

“I’d like to go on a trip”“Let’s begin planning a trip”“Plan a trip”“I need a vacation”

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Slots

Slots allow people to specify variable parts of an utterance, for example, city or date. Slots are commonly used in task and information-focused skills. There are two classes of slot types: 1. Amazon’s Built-in Slot Type, like AMAZON.DATE

and AMAZON.NUMBER2. User’s Custom Slot Type

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Invocation Name

A name that identifies the skill. The user includes this name when invoking and initiating a conversation with your skill.Examples of invocation names:

• plan my trip• command ninja• stackup greeter• s. g. weather

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Invocation Name Guidelines

• No infringement of Intellectual Property (IP)• No one-word name, unless you own the Brand, like

starbucks or uber or even lion• Must not contain the wake words “alexa”, “amazon”,

“echo”, “computer”, or the words “skill” or “app”• Lower-case alphabetic characters, spaces between

words, possessive apostrophes, periods used in abbreviations

• Specific to the functionality of the skill, like soccer trivia, sleep sounds, vocabulary builder

• Fit smoothly with at least one of the Alexa skill launch phrases (for example, “launch”, “ask”, “tell”, “load”, “begin”) to allow customers to naturally invoke the skill

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What Users Say

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Skill Service

A cloud-based service that accepts these intents as structured requests and then

acts upon them. This service must be accessible over the Internet. You provide an endpoint for your service when configuring

the skill.

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Skill Interface

A Voice User Interface (VUI) configuration that brings all of the above together so that Alexa can route requests to the service for

your skill. You create this configuration in the developer portal.

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A Skill’s Typical Request Lifecycle

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User Interaction Flow

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How to Create a Custom Skill

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Using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)

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Requirements

1.Computer ready for Node.js development2.Knowledge of JavaScript or Python

programming3.Developer’s account at

https://developer.amazon.com4.An account with Amazon Web Services5.An idea for a skill

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Alexa Skills Kit

ASK is a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation, and code samples that makes it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa.

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Alexa Voice Service

The Alexa Voice Service (AVS) allows you to integrate Alexa’s built-in voice capabilities into your connected products.

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CODING EXERCISE

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Creating Custom Skill

● Get started with Alexa:

https://developer.amazon.com/edw/home.html

● Choose “Alexa Skills Kit”

● Skill Information

○ Skill Type: Choose Custom Interaction Model

○ Name: Learning Day Greeter

○ Invocation Name: learning day greeter

○ Answer “No” to all other fields for now

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Creating Custom Skill

●Interaction Model○ Launch Skills Builder BETA (GUI)○ Define using JSON and Text

■ Intent Schema: The schema of user intents in JSON format

■ Custom Slot Types (Optional)■ Sample Utterances: These are what people say to

interact with your skill. Type in all the ways that people can invoke the intents.

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Intent Schema

{"intents": [{"intent": "WelcomeGreetingIntent"

},{"intent": "FarewellIntent","slots": [{"name": "Guest","type": "AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME"

}]

}]

}

Also to include Help, Cancel, Stop and Unhandled intents.

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Sample Utterances

WelcomeGreetingIntent helloWelcomeGreetingIntent hiWelcomeGreetingIntent I'm hereWelcomeGreetingIntent knock knockWelcomeGreetingIntent anyone's homeFarewellIntent say goodbye to {Guest}FarewellIntent {Guest} is leaving

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Creating Custom Skill

●Configuration○ Endpoint

■ AWS Lambda ARN (Amazon Resource Name)● Choose “North America” as region● Key in Lambda ARN in text box (after creating the

Lambda function)

■ HTTPS (Self-hosted secured service)

○ Account Linking: No○ Permissions (Don’t select for now)

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Creating Custom Skill

• Initialize a new Node.js app using: npm init• Install the node package “alexa-sdk”• Patch node_modules/alexa-sdk/lib/alexa.js

line 131• Create starting script “index.js” and code the

handlers for the various intents• Zip the project directory into index.zip:

• zip -r ../index.zip ./*

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Creating Custom Skill

Upload to AWS Lambda• Go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/lambda/home• Click “Create a Lambda function”• Under “Select blueprint”, select Runtime “Node.js 6.10” and

blueprint “Blank Function”• Under “Configure triggers”, select “Alexa Skills Kit”• Under “Configure function”, specify a name for the function and

select “Node.js 6.10” as Runtime.• Under Lambda function code, select Code entry type as

“Upload a .ZIP file”. Click “Package function” to upload “index.zip”

• Under “Lambda function handler and role”, leave Handler as “index.handler”, Role as “Create a custom role”, IAM Role as “Create a new IAM Role. Then click Allow at the bottom right.

• Click “Create function” and note the ARN.Back on Alexa skill configuration, specify this AWS Lambda ARN under the North America region textbox.

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Testing the Custom Skill

• Test• Under Service Simulator, enter an utterance and

click “Ask StackUp Greeter”. See the Lambda Request JSON and the Lambda Response JSON.

• Utterances to try:• “Hi”• “Knock knock”• “Chris is leaving”• “Bid farewell to Susan”• “Help”

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Alexa Apps

Amazon AlexaReverb for

Amazon Alexa

http://alexa.amazon.com/

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ADVANCED TOPICS

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Providing a Visual Component for Your Skill with Home Cards

• Interaction between the user and a physical Alexa device can include Home Cards

• Cards are displayed on the Amazon Alexa App, the companion app running on mobile devices or on the web

• Cards can contain graphics and verbose text responses

• Cards enhance the voice interaction

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Including a Card in Your Skill’s Response

Instead of:this.emit(':ask',…) or this.emit(':tell',…)

Use:this.emit(':askWithCard',…) or

this.emit(':tellWithCard',…)

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Responding with a Card example

var cardTitle = 'Welcome';var cardContent = 'Welcome to the Learning

Day 2017!';var cardImages = {

smallImageUrl: 'https://pic_720x480.png',largeImageUrl: 'https://pic1200x800.jpg'

};this.emit(':tellWithCard', speechOutput,

cardTitle, cardContent, cardImages);

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Advanced Features

• Custom Slots - define your own slot type and sample values

• Account Linking - connect the identity of the end user with a user in another system via the Alexa App

• Dialog model - multi-turn conversation between your skill and the user to collect all the information needed to fulfill each intent

• State-machine based intent handling - define different event handlers based on the current state of the skill

• Persisting Skill Attributes through DynamoDB -remembering the user across different interaction sessions

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Submitting an Alexa Skill for Certification

Submission Checklist❏ Policy guidelines❏ Security requirements❏ Functional tests❏ Voice interface and user experience tests

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Policy Guidelines

• Trademarks, IP, Brands• No child-directed skills (under age 13)• No compensation or rewards - no vote buying• No advertising or promotional messaging• No inappropriate or illegal content

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Security Requirements

Skills hosted as Lambda functions• Verify that requests are intended for your service

- check Application IDSkills hosted as web services on your own endpoint• Possess a valid & trusted certificate (SSL)• Verify incoming requests were sent by the Alexa

service• Verify that requests are intended for your service

- check Application IDSkills with Account Linking

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Functional Tests

The functional tests verify that:• The skill’s basic functionality matches the

information displayed on the skill’s detail card in the Amazon Alexa app

• The skill’s core functionality works and provides useful home cards to the Amazon Alexa app

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Voice Interface and User Experience TestsVoice interface and user experience testing focuses on:

• Testing the user experience to ensure that the skill is aligned with several key features of Alexa that help create a great experience for customers.

• Reviewing the intent schema, the set of sample utterances, and the list of values for any custom slot types you have defined to ensure that they are correct, complete, and adhere to voice design best practices.

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Tips & Avoid Common Certification Pitfalls

Tips• Short and concise utterances and prompts• Use of reprompt texts (after a moment of 8s silence)• Implement the Amazon.HelpIntent to assist user• Implement the Amazon.StopIntent/CancelIntent to allow user to

stop session anytime • Use Cards that are sent to the Alexa App as a record of the

user’s session with the skill with text and images

Avoid Common Certification Pitfalls

• Verify skill’s Invocation Name meets the requirements• Implement all required intents• Properly close the session• Trusted SSL Cert if self hosting skill service• Tests using service emulator and on Reverb app

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Amazon Alexa Skill Promo

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/alexa-developer-skill-promotion

Terms and Conditions apply.

Publish a Skill by 31st August 2017Get an Echo Dot & Dev Swag

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THANK YOU ☺

bala@nus.edu.sg - cjinpheow@gmail.com

57© 2017 National University of Singapore. All Rights Reserved

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RESOURCES

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Resources you can tap on

Official Amazon Alexa Resources

• https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit• https://github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-

for-nodejs• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbx0SPp

WT6yB7_yY_ik7pmgHCIVoice Community (let’s build one together)

• https://github.com/HCIVoice• https://hcivoicecommunity.slack.com/

Blogs

• https://www.voicebot.ai/

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