QuizMe

Inspiration

All of our team members recently became eligible to apply for a Virginia Learner's Permit, and we really wished there was a way for somebody to quiz us with different possible questions from the test. At HackTJ, we noticed the Amazon Echo Plus, and realized that this hardware would be a perfect way for us to achieve this idea. Ultimately, the idea for 'QuizMe' was inspired from our wishes to do well on the Driver's License and Permit civic tests.

What it does

When Alexa is prompted with the voice command 'Quiz Me', she launches a program containing over 75 sample questions from previous Learner's Permit tests, and picks 20 questions at random to ask. Each question has 3 possible answer choices, and the user simply has to say a number in order to find out if their answer was right or not. Alexa reads out the question as well as all three answer choices and awaits the user's response.

How we built it

We used Amazon Web Services, along with the Amazon Alexa Skills Developer application to create a new skill for Alexa. We created a Javascript program containing a list of intents to help Alexa identify what the user was asking her to do, along with a Python program containing a list of all of the questions and answers, as well as explicit prompts for Alexa to say.

Challenges we ran into

When we first acquired the Amazon Echo Plus, a huge challenge was the fact that none of us knew how Alexa worked, or how to set her up. Furthermore, we were even more lost on how to create a new Skill for Alexa. Firstly, we had trouble with the wireless connection portion of Alexa, and for much of the hackathon, Alexa could not connect to Wifi. In addition, when we were using the Amazon Web Services, we had to overcome the challenge of our unfamiliarity of the program.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First and foremost, we are proud of the fact that we were able to successfully program an Amazon Skill that let users get quizzed by Alexa. Leading up to this goal, small yet extremely significant accomplishments paved the way. We are proud that we were able to come up with this useful idea as a team, and that our collaboration was able to get all of the code done in time.

What we learned

Throughout the course of this hackathon, we learned how to use Amazon Web Services, Alexa Skills Developer, and more about the languages of JavaScript and Python as well. Through the process of making our Alexa Skill, we watched multiple tutorial videos, read many articles, and tried a numerous amount of alternatives to get this skill to work. All of this led to a great deal of learning for all of our teammates, ranging from the various languages to questions on the learner's permit test.

What's next for QuizMe

Currently QuizMe is limited to only quizzing for Driver's Tests, but we hope to expand this concept to include civic and educational tests of all kinds. Some examples would include the citizenship test, voter awareness tests, the SAT's, and eventually even your local school district's tests. We are planning to create an user interface that will allow users to create custom quizzes, for all their studying needs. In addition, QuizMe hopes to incorporate elements of Artificial Intelligence, with the computer learning which categories you need more practice in based on the questions that you answer incorrectly.