Brannon is an engineer and graduate student pursuing a Master of Liberal Arts in Sustainability at Harvard Extension School. He had built a few Alexa skills before and decided to take part in the Alexa Skills Challenge: Life Hacks organized by Amazon.

Brannon’s not a tech person, so he used Storyline to create and publish his Alexa skill for the competition. His Alexa skill, Eco Hacks, has got to the finals of the challenge, going ahead of thousands of agencies & studios competing for the prize.

We interviewed Brannon to learn more about how he created an award-winning Alexa skill with Storyline and what challenges he faced during this process.

Inspiration

— Brannon, good to meet you! My first question is plain simple. Why do you build Alexa skills? What drives you?

Many of the other technology platforms take the user out of the present moment.

I build voice-first applications because they can augment face to face interaction between parents and their children in a way that allows them to be more present with each other.

Many studies have shown that other technologies have the tendency to isolate people from one another, and I want to create experiences that educate while increasing the number of quality time families spend together.

— I really like that motivation. What did you start from?

I started with a vision of creating project-based educational content to help kids learn in more tactile ways.

I hosted in-person workshops and explored a concept for an online learning tool. Overall, the conclusion that I came to was that neither option encouraged learning in a way that brought parents and children together. The biggest influence in learning is the support that a child feels from their parent.

— How many Alexa skills have you built so far? Can you describe some examples?

I have created three skills so far.

Eco-Hacks is the only live voice skill at the moment, but we are in the process of updating 2 other skills. One of which curates culturally relevant cooking lessons that teach parents and kids about nutrition and health while learning how to make culturally inspired dishes.

The other voice skill helps kids learn how to make better moral choices by presenting them with real life scenarios.

The Idea

— Let’s talk about Eco Hacks skill more. Can you tell us in detail what it does?

Eco Hacks Alexa skill presents facts about environmental conservation in a fun game of truth or dare.

Players can reveal a truth about a habit that they have that is hurting the environment OR they can choose to complete a 1-minute dare related to living more sustainably.