Homework Hack

Dialog Flow of the Skill

Inspiration

We thought of finding a fresh way of managing time using an item commonly found in dorms

What it does

The Alexa initially asks the user to tell her about the homework they have and stores it within the program. From there the Alexa asks the user whether or not they want to work on it. From there the Alexa cycles through the assignments, allowing the user to complete them or partially work on them until completion.

How I built it

We built HomeworkHack through the Alexa developer console using the custom skill module. We used draw.io to develop a dialog flow for the skill. We used Alexa development console to develop the intents, or determinators for user responses, to work through the dialog flow. These intents needed to be trained with sample "utterances", or the actuall input given to the Alexa. Once we trained the Alexa to respond to each intent, given the sample utterances provided, we wrote the actual code behind the interaction model we created previously. Then we debugged the skill.

Challenges I ran into

It was incredibly difficult to code for the Alexa skill, because the documentation for skill sdk was poorly written, if written at all. The largest problem we faced was developing a dialog flow, while not being able to control what step the user can be in at any one time. Some other problems that we ran into were getting Alexa to loop through certain instructions, getting Alexa to set up a break times, which we later removed, and differentiating the different "Yes and No" responses in different parts of the dialog flow.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are most proud of learning a new way of writing up a program. Being able to apply, skills across multiple discplines of Computer Sciences and other programming languages to use for this project despite the unfamilarities.

What I learned

We learn have to write a program using Alexa's style of javascript. Using the Alexa SDK, was major undertaking and shouldn't be discounted.

What's next for Homework Hack

Working to link Homework hack to a massive database to allow students to schedule a large study group, volunteer works, movie nights, and hikes together. Allowing HomeworkHack to have an onboarding process that allows the user to import their own calendars or link it to a learning managment system, such as Blackboard or Canvas. Support for multiple users, break times, etc.