In this episode, Teri welcomes Einat Laudon, a biochemist turned Alexa skills creator. Einat went from having no computer programming skills to creating three fantastic skills, one of which is related to education and teaching evolution concepts out of a school curriculum. She has also created two skills specifically geared towards the Halloween holiday. She has a Masters in Biochemistry and worked a few years in a scientific technology company designing lesson plans. She developed an interest in creating apps and later discovered voice technology which led her to start creating her own Alexa skills.
Both of her Halloween skills are available in Canada but the evolution education one is only available in the United States because of the way Amazon classifies their skills in Canada and getting approval in Canada for that.
Kiwi Monsters
- Her first skill is called Kiwi Monsters.
- Learned how to design skills on storyline. The flow charts in storyline reminded her of an evolution tree which gave her the idea to develop a decision tree where users could decide what would happen to the monsters. Essentially, users can explore the evolutionary tree of the monsters.
- Kiwi Monsters is a choose your own adventure type of story with kids making choices as they go along, while also learning scientific principles based on evolution.
First Halloween skill
- She first thought of scary Halloween sounds and made a skill based on that. She combined different sounds to create nice music with all kinds of scary sounds in the background.
Second Halloween skill
- Thought about an interactive Halloween skill where Alexa would greet and entertain trick-or-treaters when they go to people’s houses. She likes using human voices and used her 86 year old neighbor’s voice to create the witch’s voice.
- The story: When a trick-or-treater arrives to a house they open the skill and they talk to a witch. They get to choose which kind of scary noises they want to make with Alexa to scare and trick the witch.
The sound effects
- She applied her creativity in combining different sound effects that she got online to create the story in a way that would give users an immersive experience.
Future skills
- She plans to create more skills based on science, education and games.
- She’s working with other designers to create sound effects for their skills to create more immersive experiences for users. She enjoys it.
List of resources mentioned in this episode:
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