Building voice experiences with Alexa will enable voice interactions through many different devices as voice becomes more ubiquitous. The Alexa ecosystem allows developers to create skills that provide content to customers on all Alexa-enabled devices, which are growing rapidly in both consumer and business products. The Alexa Skills Kit allows developers to build voice apps or skills that respond to customer requests through Alexa by processing intents and returning text or audio responses.
4. The Internet of Things is emerging as the third wave in the life-cycle of the Internet. Its growth is enabling new and expanded businesses
while also powering revenue generation, productivity and cost savings and consumer engagement.
‘11 ‘19‘15
OVER 60 MM CARS
Connected Car Penetration
2020 Projections
Source: IDC Goldman Sachs Investment Research
45 MM HOMES
Connected Home Install Base
2017 Projections driving over $12 BN in Revenue/Year
Source: Berg Insight
$20 BN/YEAR
Wearable Market Revenue Generation
2017 Projections
Source: IDC Goldman Sachs
Investment Research
Source: Gartner; Goldman Sachs
Investment Research
28 BILLION “THINGS” BY 2019
ENABLING THE FUTURE
6. We also recently launched
Fire TV with Alexa integrated
directly into the device.
Simplifying everyday actions
with voice on new and familiar
devices.
& FIRE TVMEET ECHO
The First
Alexa
Endpoints
The Echo is the first and best-known
endpoint of the Alexa
Ecosystem…The Echo was built to
make life
easier and more enjoyable.
8. Create Great Content:
ASK is how you connect
to your consumer
THE ALEXA ECOSYSTEM
Supported by two powerful frameworks
ALEXA
VOICE
SERVICE
Unparalleled Distribution:
AVS allows your content
to be everywhere
Lives In The Cloud
Automated Speech
Recognition (ASR)
Natural Language
Understanding (NLU)
Always Learning
ALEXA
SKILLS
KIT
9. UNDER THE HOOD OF ASK
A closer look at how the Alexa Skills Kit process a request and returns an appropriate response
You Pass Back a Textual or
Audio Response
You Pass Back a Graphical
Response
Alexa Converts Text-to-Speech
(TTS) & Renders Graphical
Component
Respond to Intent
through Text & Visual
Alexa sends Customer
Intent to Your Service
Your Service
processes
Request
User Makes a
Request
Audio Stream is
sent up to Alexa Alexa Identifies Skill & Recognizes
Intent Through ASR & NLU
13. Let’s Build Some Skills
GITHUB:
https://github.com/amzn/alexa-skills-kit-
js
Building a How-to Skill
http://bit.ly/howtoskill
How to Build a Fact Skill
http://bit.ly/factskill
How to build a Trivia Skill
Echo
Thank you for taking the time to meet with us today to discuss how Alexa can affect the way you connect with customers.
And how to continue to evolve your product through the power of voice.
Alexa, the platform, has been incredibly well received by consumers and tech enthusiast alike – and we are excited to both share and discuss ways in which you can leverage this technology.
Intro
Alexa’s genesis was born through Jeff and Amazon’s leadership team dreaming of ways to make life easier… discussing how consumers will connect with the every day tasks of life, w/ or w/o a device… at little or no cost to the customer.
Similar to the way computing changed how customers gathered information and connected with customers across the world; or the way cloud computing changed how we manage our data – we believe voice technology will change the way consumers interact with your product.
You can imagine a world where we are making dinner reservations while driving to a restaurant, asking for the best wine pairings when driving to the store, or controlling the news through voice while driving into work.
The kitchen is where a lot of Echos live today; customers are asking for recipe ideas, controlling their entertainment (w/ music and podcasts), setting timers, etc. all in a hands-free way.
Of course the connected home is already a huge industry; and customers can set alarms, control their lighting, heat and garage door openers w/out having to open up their laptop or find their phones.
We feel confident that those visions already are, or are ever closer to being a reality because of voice technology.
As you can tell we believe voice is a huge part of the future and think its pertinent for you to be thinking about how your product will connect with customers through voice right now.
And we are not the only company to think that.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming the new, cheaper version of the Internet – and a reason Amazon jumped into the game. More on that, later.
Research and and Industry Trends on voice tell us that our vision of the future is happening and that voice is where everything is converging
There will be 28 Billion Things connected to the internet by 2019
There will be approximately 45 Million connected homes by 2017 driving over $12BN in revenue per year.
Connected homes include connecting household appliances to the network, remote management of devices, energy management, etc.
By 2017 the wearable market will account for over $20 BN in annual revenue.
There will be over 60MM connected cars by 2020.
Cars that will connect to the internet
Goldman Sachs Research :
http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/iot-infographic.html
Additional Data Points
“While many emerging technologies such as haptics, gesture and eye tracking are slated to gain traction over the coming years, voice is expected to be the most important area for growth in mobile user interfaces.”
What’s Next:
http://whatsnext.nuance.com/customer-experience/future-with-mobile-voice-interfaces/
“The age of touch could soon come to an end. From smartphones and smartwatches, to home devices, to in-car infotainment systems, touch is no longer the primary user interface.”
“Technology market leaders are driving a migration from touch to voice as a user interface. Apple (Siri), Google (Google Now), Microsoft (Cortana), Amazon (Echo), and Samsung (S Voice), recognizing the limits of the GUI paradigm in the age of connected machines and devices, have invested heavily in developing the software and algorithms to interact with users via voice.”
DesignNews:
http://www.designnews.com/index-dn-ad.asp?gotourl=http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=277319&dfpPParams=ind_184,industry_consumer,kw_42,aid_277319&dfpLayout=blog
“The market intelligence firm anticipates that these use cases will drive significant growth in attach rates for speech and voice recognition technologies in mobile devices during the next several years. Tractica forecasts that native speech recognition will grow from 45% of all mobile devices in 2014 to 82% by 2020. “
Tractia: https://www.tractica.com/newsroom/press-releases/speech-recognition-to-achieve-82-percent-penetration-in-mobile-devices-by-2020/
“Meanwhile, voice recognition, which identifies individual voiceprints and may be utilized for various biometric identification and authentication purposes, will grow to an attach rate of 36% by 2020, even though virtually no mobile devices have such capability today.”
“Aural interface technologies are rapidly becoming an essential part of the user interface for mobile devices,” says principal analyst Peter Cooney. “They add functionality like voice authentication and also enable new applications, such as virtual digital assistants.”
“In 2016 NO INTERFACE will finally become a reality, thanks to the powerful convergence of primed user expectation and new technologies that are both fueling and serving the need for more natural interactions with tech.”
TrendWatching http://trendwatching.com/trends/no-interface/
“40% of adult smartphone owners use voice search to ask for directions, 39% to dictate a text message, 32% to make a phone call, 23% while they are cooking.”
Google Mobile Voice Research :https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/omg-mobile-voice-survey-reveals-teens.html
“By 2018, 30% of our interactions with technology will be through "conversations" with smart machines. Product leaders at technology and service providers need to invest now to improve currently limited voice interfaces.”
Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/doc/3021226/market-trends-voice-ui-consumer
“Consumer technology is unquestionably headed in this direction. We will have to explain to future generations what it was like to live in a world where we couldn’t operate our electronics with our voice, and our electronics were not smart enough to understand us.”
“If we step back and take a look at a general theme in consumer technology today, we notice a pattern emerging — the elimination of friction. The success of messaging apps as platforms all over the world are based on the simple premise of eliminating friction. The move to contactless mobile payments is a move to eliminate friction. Google with Now on Tap is moving in that direction as is Apple with Proactive in iOS 9. The examples are countless and the trend is clear: Convenience trumps nearly everything in consumer electronics, and things that eliminate friction are convenient.”
“Convenience trumps nearly everything in consumer electronics, and things that eliminate friction are convenient.”
“Voice as a user-interface layer eliminates the friction for many tasks that are possible by typing on my smart device but, often for such small interactions, voice is much more convenient.”
“As interesting as voice is as an interaction layer to most of us in the developed world, it may evolve to become central to those in the third world.”
re/code: http://recode.net/2015/07/01/amazon-echo-and-the-voice-ui/
Infographic sourced from this article:
http://www.i-scoop.eu/internet-of-things/
It’s clear that there is a place for voice in the IoT world. We saw that opportunity and seized it, dedicating resources to building what we believe to be the secret sauce in voice.
We’re excited to introduce you to Alexa and explain why we feel we’ve got something special here with her and with the first devices we’ve built to bring her to the masses.
The Echo is the first and best-known endpoint of the Alexa Ecosystem.
And the first device that allows you to connect with customers, through voice, using Alexa
As mentioned earlier, Alexa and The Echo device was built to make life easier and more enjoyable
Quick Timeline:
Echo Launched late 2014 to Prime members only and by invite only
Even with those restrictions, the product Exceeded our Expectations: We had over a month of orders on backlog
With that success, we launched the Echo to all Amazon.com customers in June of 2015.
And at the same time, we released the SDK for developers to hook into and build
But the Echo is actually a pretty mundane device.
It has two downward firing speakers
7 microphones
And is simply waiting to hear the wake word “Alexa” ; when the real magic starts to happen.
And the real beauty of Alexa is the platform.
Echo is the first endpoint for Alexa, but products of all kinds can integrate with the technology.
This is seen with the FireTV which recently launched with Alexa integrated directly into the device, bringing the voice experience directly to a visual endpoint and tying her to a process dying to be freed from the ever growing buttons on a remote control.
While FireTVs don’t have speakers, they do connect to a product that does… so it works.
LEAVE OUT?
This first version is the tip of the iceberg, our product roadmap includes continued updates and features… think of what we’ve done with Amazon Instant Video, Appstore
Now, other times we launch products with a big bang hoping to set a new standard… think Kindle E-reader
Echo falls in-between these two types of scenarios
We knew voice technology was big and wanted to get a MVP out ASAP
But had no idea it would make such a bang from the start
We feel that with Alexa we’ve really got something special that not only opens the voice experience to others, but ensures its evolution.
To foster that growth we’ve created an ecosystem that ensures content owners and brands can develop on the platform and that makers have a way to build Alexa into their products.
I previously mentioned the Alexa ecosystem, so let’s spend a little time talking about what that means.
The Alexa Ecosystem is supported by two important frameworks that provide unparalleled distribution and ways to connect with your customer.
On one side we have ASK (Alexa Skills Kit) which empowers brands and developers to create rich voice experiences for their consumers;
On the other side is AVS (Alexa Voice Service), which ensures that the places that Alexa can go are endless
All you Have to Do Is ASK (What is the Alexa Skills Kit?)
The ASK is our SDK, read human….our way of making the voice experience via Alexa possible.
ASK gives you the ability to create new voice-driven capabilities (also known as skills, think Apps) for Alexa using the new Alexa Skills Kit (ASK).
You can connect existing services to Alexa in minutes with just a few lines of code.
You can also build entirely new voice-powered experiences in a matter of hours, even if you know nothing about speech recognition or natural language processing.
AVS: Serving a Platform Agnostic Voice Experience
Let’s start with AVS, it’s through the Alexa Voice Service that, hardware manufacturers and other participants in the new and exciting world of the Internet of Things (IoT) can incorporate an Alexa-driven voice experience into their devices.
Any device that has a speaker, a microphone, and an Internet connection can integrate Alexa with a few lines of code.
This enables a platform agnostic growth strategy that ends with your consumer having one, if not multiple seamless touch-points to a world by voice.
Just imagine what that means…
While right now there are two Amazon provided endpoints, picture everything from a car to a microwave to a pen, and more...all enabled to deliver an experience by voice
Let’s take a step back and look under the hood of ASK.
When the user makes a request of Alexa, all of THIS happens in just seconds...resulting in audio and/or visual feedback to the user.
So how does this work...
The customer speaks into a device
Ex. Alexa, what do I make for dinner?
Ex. Alexa, play a song from Bruno Mars
We send an audio file up to the Alexa Service sitting in the cloud.
Alexa identifies your skill and recognizes intent through Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
Alexa passes the intent and variables (ie. slots) to your service, where you process and return VUI and GUI
Graphical Experiences are delivered via the companion app, and on companion screens with the recent launch on FireTV
VUI, again, through the speaker (could be text or audio file)
- So I will now talk about the Alexa Platform and give you a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes
- First and foremost - Alexa is a Platform
- Echo is just one device through which you can access Alexa’s skills
[Animation]
- The Alexa platform is device agnostic.
Built-in skills
Present and future
as well as any skill that you build with the Alexa SDK
are automatically available on any device that integrates with the AVS API
- The AVS API is universal, and is the basis for 3rd party clients as well as Amazon devices such as Echo and FireTV.
-------
- All of Alexa's core functions run in the (AWS) cloud:
- Automated Speech Recognition: through which we understand what you say
- Natural Language Understanding:
through which we determine the underlying intent
-- what you mean and would like to accomplish
- Skills: the application logic for that intent,
which depending on the situation may be
a built-in skill
or a custom skill built with the Alexa SDK
- Text-to-Speech: through which we produce a spoken response
- An event bus through which we publish activity to the Alexa companion application
- And finally a machine learning infrastructure
Through which Alexa continuously learns and improves
Both globally, across all users
And - in a tailored fashion - for each individual user
We started with a variety of consumer products, including first and third party devices, apps, and services.
We eliminated ones that were too similar, seemed to have lower value to customers, or that we thought would be deprioritized.
We also grouped all the headless devices together since they should behave like the Echo family of devices.