Can I build a skill to guide the user to do some exercise?

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Corey asked · Jun 06 at 12:08 AM

Can I build a skill to guide the user to do some exercise?

Hi all,

I want to build a skill to guide the user to do some exercise. The guide includes a series of instructions. Between some instructions, there might be some short gaps (a few seconds). And some instructions need to be confirmed or answered by the user, others need not. Here is a short example of the guidance.

[Alexa]: Did you sit down? [wait for participant response]
[Alexa]: Great! Now that you are sitting down, feel your hip bones make contact with the seat underneath you. And slowly stack your shoulder over your hip and bring your head in between your shoulders. Were you able to do that? [wait for participant response]
[Alexa]: Ok that’s great! Relax the muscles in your face, relax your jaw. [give 3-5 second gap]
[Alexa]: Soften your shoulders away from your ears. [give 3-5 second gap]
[Alexa]: Gently touch your lips together. [give 3-5 second gap]
[Alexa]: Begin to breathe in and out through your nose. Notice your breath.

....

Could you please tell me whether this is feasible with Alexa skill? If yes, what should I do to implement the functions(waiting time, multiple consecutive instructions)? For the instructions need to be confirmed, should I use one intent with slots for the whole guidance? or just one instruction for one intent?

Thanks very much.

alexa skills kit interaction model

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Answer 1 · 2019-06-07T18:42:38Z

KirkC@Amazon answered · Jun 07 at 06:42 PM · ACCEPTED ANSWER

Hi Corey. In short, yes what you're describing is feasible. When it comes to adding pauses to your skill's speech output, you'd want to use some SSML, specifically the break tag. A single break tag supports up to a 10 second pause.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#break

Now, with regard to your questions surrounding how best to design your skill, that's up to you but I can say that writing out your desired dialog like you did above is a great way to get started. In fact, we provide a worksheet during our hackathons to help developers determine which or how many intents or slots they need for their skill. I've provided you a link here to print out if you're interested:

https://alexa.design/dialogadvanced

Lastly, depending upon your skill's complexity, you might want to save some contextual information from the user's session. For example, to help you determine what a user's request is in response to or what the skill asked previously. That can be achieved using session attributes. I've provided our blog on session attributes below and also a couple link to sample skills which utilize session attributes:

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/08edaa00-59e2-46b7-aace-4080f2a87450/using-session-attributes-in-your-alexa-skill-to-enhance-the-voice-experience
Node.js ASK SDK High Low Game Skill: https://github.com/alexa/skill-sample-nodejs-highlowgame
Python ASK SDK High Low Game Skill: https://github.com/alexa/skill-sample-python-highlowgame

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Can I build a skill to guide the user to do some exercise?

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