Finances are a vital aspect to every single person's life. We liked how Narmi provides an online platform for smaller financial institutions, allowing them to grow and compete with larger banks. By introducing voice control through Alexa, we can improve the accessibility of the platform to its users. Our vision is to make online banking more accessible, more straightforward, and more modern.
What it does
We developed an additional skill to an Alexa, allowing it to gain access to user's Narmi account. The Alexa will prompt the user to do an action that normally would require an app or a computer. These actions include checking various account balances, inspecting previous account transactions and transferring money between accounts. Amazon's web service can then access Narmi's RestAPI through our echo skills to obtain relevant data. The Alexa then can tell the user what he/she wants to know, all with a few simple phrases.
How we built it
When we started, we decided that we had to work on two parts of the project in parallel, split between the team. One group's responsibility was to design the user experience and build the Alexa skill. The other was to connect the Narmi API with the Alexa skill. In order to develop the Alexa skill, we had to use Amazon's developer space to create prompts, utterances, and intents that would indicate to the Alexa what information the user is looking for. To code what Alexa had to say back, the Amazon AWS interface was used alongside JavaScript to design Alexa's conversation with the user. Linking Alexa with the Narmi API also included writing JavaScript code to access Narmi's RestAPI to obtain the user's account information from Narmi's databases. Finally, we had to connect the two parts within Alexa's skill, which was all done in JavaScript.
Challenges we ran into
The initial Narmi API had a few errors in the documentation, making it difficult to obtain the user information that we wanted.
Learning how Alexa "listens" and obtains information from what we said. We went through various iterations of intents and utterances to tell Alexa exactly what to listen for.
Alexa's framework and how to even create a new skill for Alexa.
Issues installing Node.js packages using npm, also importing these files into the Amazon interface.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Learning new frameworks and languages
Attempting something we've never worked with before and finishing it
What we learned
How to use Alexa's framework
How to code in JavaScript
How to use RestAPI with Node.js client
What's next for Narmi Alexa Bank Info
The possibilities are endless. Connecting a banking app with Alexa just shows how Alexa can make everyday things so much easier and more accessible. In terms of Narmi, we could definitely add more actions and add a security feature. Once Alexa becomes more portable, so we will our access to our finances, and worrying about security and accessibility will be a thing of the past.
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