Quiz Bee Trivia

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  Quiz Bee Trivia

Inspiration

When young, people of all ages played a simple game called Name, Place , Animal and Thing. Each person regardless of age has to write a name, a place , an animal and a non-living thing in a paper beginning with an Alphabet, that the youngest player chooses. The game "Quiz bee Trivia" though different from the paper game, has the categories - Animals for guessing an Animal name, Capitals for guessing the name of the Capital for a country, People for guessing the name of the famous person and Places for guessing the place name with an exotic animal, famous person or a natural attraction. In the traditional game, people help others playing the game by providing hints. "Quiz Bee trivia" too has hints when the player is stuck on a question from that particular category. The main objective or inspiration for making "Quiz Bee Trivia" though burrowed from the traditional game is to create awareness of famous people, places, animals around the world and to enhance the general knowledge.

What it does

Quiz Bee Trivia is a trivia game from the categories - Animals, People, Places and Capitals. A player can select a particular category from the 4 mentioned above to start playing. The sample pack has 3 questions from each category. If the player is stuck on a question from a particular category or chooses a wrong answer, Alexa responds with a hint. The player can also hear a different hint by asking Alexa for a hint. The player, if interested can buy the premium pack. The premium pack has 15 questions from the above 4 categories. The user can get a hint for a question or skip the question. Alexa also states a fun or educational fact at the end of the question, when player says the correct answer.

How I built it

The interaction model for the skill has intents, slots and end-points. The end-point for this skill uses AWS-Lambda function in the programming language Node.js. The intents used in this skill is designed to get a category, get a new question , get a hint , get a fact and check for the correct answer when the player chooses a particular category or says next or skip, asks for a hint, says the wrong answer or correct answer. Up-sell intent to describe about the in-skill product for purchase, shopping intent if the user want to know if something is available in store to purchase and product detail and buy intent for knowing extra detail along with the inspiration for building the premium product for purchase and to buy the product. There are two slots. One slot which has the name of the in-skill product to purchase. Another slot that has the all the wrong answers which the player can say along with the correct answers. The skill also uses amazons built-in intents - Yes, No, cancel, stop and Help.

Challenges I ran into

The challenges that I ran into spans beyond technology as I had to not only do extensive research on various places, capitals, famous people and animals but also deliver the content that is not only surprising and accurate but also interesting. Also, though this trivia game is inspired from the classic paper and multiple player version, the challenge for me is to design the Alexa skill for a single player and to offer more than one hint, say additional fact about the questions in each category and anticipate the player's wrong answer. The amount of research in getting the right questions about the 4 categories is more than the amount of time spent on building the Alexa Skill with in-skill purchase. While designing the in-skill purchase the major intents like shopping, up-sell and product detail though similar are different, as the intention of the customer is different. So the challenge for me was to identify and understand the nuances and build the skill.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Accomplishments for building the skill “Quiz Bee Trivia” has been successful from the design and content aspect as well. From the content aspect, knowing and researching on the categories - Animals, Capitals, Place name and famous people around the world is a humongous task, as there are so many extraordinary and inspiring things, places and people to choose from .Researching and then choosing the right questions for each category from a whole lot, has been quite a knowledgeable journey.

What I learned

By building this skill I not only learned how to design an in-skill purchase in Alexa but also learnt some good places to put in my bucket list, learned about famous people around the world and extraordinary skills and habitat of some exotic animals.

What's next for Quiz Bee Trivia

The skill "Quiz Bee Trivia" presently has 4 categories. The next steps would be to include more categories. Depending on the popularity and the need from the player, the skill can be modified to include a question intent for the user to directly go to the question number from the particular category.

Built With

• amazon-alexa
• aws-lambda
• node.js