Santa Pals - North Pole Communicator

Santa Pals let's you talk to and play games with Santa. Listen to music, feed reindeer, and try to become Head Elf!

Comment

Inspiration

Santa loves kids of all ages and I wanted to bring the magic of the North Pole right into everyone's home with the help of Alexa! My kids love Christmas, toys and all things technology. We launched a plush toy company 6 years ago and I had started creating an Alexa-based virtual pet skill this past summer that would connect with our mixed-up stuffed animals. However, and much to my dismay, my skill was rejected because kid-directed skills were not permitted - sniff :-(. Yet, not a month later, Amazon announced that kid-directed skills would be supported (cue cheers!) Of course, by then, I was into the mode of setting up for the upcoming Christmas season, and therefore thinking about Santa, when I noticed the lack of Santa-themed skills. Santa Pals was born!

What it does

Santa Pals enables kids to connect to the North Pole to talk with Santa and his wintertime friends. Santa Pals is actually more than just a simple "one-and-done" skill, but more like a bundle of games and interactive adventures that uses the power of voice, music and sound effects to capture the magic of Christmas through Alexa-enabled devices. You can "Open Santa Pals" and ask Alexa to:

  • Play North Pole Radio (holiday music streaming)
  • Feed Santa's Reindeer
  • Get a North Pole Weather Report
  • Sing with Santa
  • Play Game, Santa's Secret Number
  • Track Santa (counts down to Santa's launch and progress Christmas Eve)
  • Learn Santa Facts
  • Take the Santa Survey (vote on questions about Santa)
  • Story Time (listen to 'Twas the Night Before Christmas')
  • Tell me a Joke
  • Hug Santa
  • Christmas Countdown
  • Check Peppermint Points
  • Check Elf Rank
  • Find out What's New

Santa Pals includes a rewards points system - called Peppermint Points, and a leveling engine to encourage return visits. As you collect Peppermint Points, you will be promoted toward becoming Head Elf, by taking care of Santa's reindeer, giving him virtual hugs, playing games, and uncovering "Easter eggs" along the way. Santa Pals encourages thoughtful and kind behavior, and includes edutainment style games that seek to improve logic, math and memory skills.

How I built it

Santa Pals is built using an extended version of the open source AlexaSkillsKit.NET library, hosted on Microsoft Azure services using C# and SQL Server. Streamed audio files for the North Pole Radio and Story Time functions are pulled from Amazon's S3 web services. The Santa Tracker features of the skill come from the open source data set Google provides and are synchronized with the visualizations provided through Google's Santa Tracker web and android apps.

Challenges I ran into

Challenges fell into three major areas for me:

  1. Technical
  2. COPPA
  3. Engagement

In the Technical arena, I quickly found that the AlexaSkillsKit.NET library was not up-to-date with support for audio directives. This meant that I needed to extend the library in order to play audio files longer than 90 seconds and at higher quality. In addition, I did not initially understand that the certification process would effectively "lock up" the development instance of the skill until it passed certification. This stalled my development activities while I waited on certification results, until I came up with alternatives to host multiple versions of the skill so development could continue while awaiting a certification result. I also encountered challenges with the audio Enqueue functions that sent me into the Amazon Developer forums to work collaboratively to find workarounds (which we did!).

In the area of COPPA, I had originally envisioned having Santa talk to children by name, but soon realized this would pose a violation of Amazon's kid-directed skill policies, since it would involve the collection of personally identifiable information. Instead, I settled for less specific responses, but used a number of randomized responses from Santa that provide a fairly convincing and entertaining alternative that we think is still pretty engaging.

Finally, with respect to user engagement, the skill was initially mostly Alexa narrated jokes and speech responses, with little in the way of audio sound effects and Santa character voices. We found that users did not understand when they were earning peppermint points and so we opted to added dings and bells and other sound effects to help indicate when things were happening in the skill or a sub-game.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

As Santa's elves have continued work on the Santa Pals skill, user engagement has steadily increased. Santa Pals has generated over 150,000 interactions between Thanksgiving and Christmas day. Kids and families have streamed over 25,000 songs since the launch of the North Pole Radio feature. Over 30% of users have either played with the skill continuously for more than 30 minutes or returned for subsequent play on future dates. We also received 100% 5-star reviews through the Christmas season, with one Parent remarking, "My 6 year old lit up when she found out she was talking to the REAL Santa!"

I am also proud of the custom game-state engine inside the skill that tracks and controls a user's progress; unlocking additional features and making Santa Pals a play-space to hold an unbounded number of games and activities related to Christmas, the North Pole, and Santa Claus.

What I learned

It is a HUGE responsibility to take-on anything related to Santa Claus. Children need the magic to work, to be consistent with other sources, and to be positive in every way. Parents want to know that the technology is not going to fail and end in tears for their little ones. At first, I thought launching a skill for Christmas would be "just fun", but the more that users responded to it, the more I felt a responsibility to deliver a great and expanding experience. Becoming Santa's communication portal is no small task - neither technically nor emotionally! I am just glad that Santa was willing to respond to my email when I first asked him if he would be willing to try out this new North Pole Communicator technology. Maybe we should call this "Santa's a Pal"!

What's next for Santa Pals - North Pole Communicator

I have many ideas already in the works for Santa Pals including added content such as more audio stories, additional music, and new games. For example, new features I hope to launch soon include:

  • Naughty or Nice (positive behaviors encouragement system)
  • Christmas Coding Game (use your voice to create basic if-then-else logic/coding constructs to help the elves pack the sleigh)
  • Christmas Village Adventure (virtually walk-around Christmas village, visit Mrs. Claus, the elves and Santa's reindeer)
  • Christmas Cookie Recipes (get recipes for classic holiday cookies and treats - including reindeer food!)
  • Christmas Bulletins (Notifications to draw you back when new content and time-sensitive news are added)
  • Thank you Generator (Voice-enabled thank you message generator the kids can control to thank their loved ones for gifts)

I am also open to your ideas! Send the elves an email at santapals@genetipetz.com.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates