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question

John Marshall avatar image
John Marshall asked

Keeping track of skill keywords

Been seeing a lot of new skills released of late some great some not so great - but purely my opinion. One thing remains a constant from a users perspective. The user must get the exact voice command syntax correct otherwise, Alexa reports "I do not understand" or similar response. For example 'Alexa trigger tv off" If you forget "trigger" or get the string wrong and say "Alexa trigger tv" Alexa errors out. Is it within Alexa's coding to have Alexa suggest correct syntax? ie "Did you mean "tv off?" or "Did you mean to trigger a device?" then "These are the devices you may trigger" etc... I have actually seen this kind of response in some of the developers skills and it provides a greater experience and more user friendly environment.
alexa skills kit
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1 Answer

jjaquinta avatar image
jjaquinta answered
Actually Amazon native features have the scope to do a lot more than 3rd party skills developed with the ASK. It's the fact that 3rd party skills have to fight for people's attention, because they are optional and have no guaranteed audience, that you are probably seeing them place more emphasis on usability. A whole chunk of my book ( http://www.amazon.com/How-Program-Amazon-Echo-Development-ebook/dp/B011J6AP26) is on design, because these days usability is king.
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