Inspiration I was inspired by the previous kids competition. I think children will play a major part as a consumer in the digital voice world. So i designed this skill especially for kids to learn about our environment.
Welcome to Captain Earth.
What it does
this skill guides children in a very interactive way through the story. The story consists of 19 different stages where the plot will go on and the player gathers more and more info about waste minimization and sustainability.
How I built it I built this skill using the alexa python sdk. I used Fallback Intent to gently handle unknown input. Furthermore I used airtable to hold the game state, user ids and also the whole storyline. So i can add more stories and plots on the go. When a player leaves the fame, the next time he can come back and continue at the same place as he left.
I coded a intent model generator which can handle any amount of data in the airtable and names it according to the id of the airtable column. In the skill code I just check for the id and so the skill will know which storyline to play. Furthermore the model knows which paths are acceptable to use or go after a certain story block.
Challenges I ran into
The biggest problem was to create a story which will be interactive, exciting and also used for learning at the same time. With the introduction of a superhero who fights against the bad wastes etc. the children are looking up to him and want to help!
Also I needed a way to add variable amount of datablocks (intents) and furthermore find a way to dynamically get the info out of the skill. The can handle function does wonders here. I made a special ID Tag in the airtable and only if the intent name is in it Alexa knows that this is a story block to be played.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of I created a very exciting kinds story, where kids can play interactive but also dont need to use complex commands. Each command is given by the skill. If a user doesnt know how to proceed, the help function will tell him all possible movements.
What I learned I learned how to make kids interact with a new world of devices. It has to be fun and you have to put the educational stuff in there. I tested it with 12 children and all of them loved it. I also learned a lot of new technology concepts during building this skill (Airtable etc.)
What's next for Captain Earth I want to add more plot to the story and make the modal dialog more interacting. A lot of more stories are planned.
I also want to add more learn functionalities. I work with a local script author and we are planning 3 new stories which will be much longer than this one.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
Would love to hear your feedback info@envyeden.com
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