Alexa’s skill
Alexa is a superior product that was advanced by Amazon to create a competitive advantage against Apple’s Siri. The Alexa mobile phone app employs the use of a smart speaker dubbed Echo. Other related speakers include Tag and Dot. Alexa can also be accessed via certain non-amazon devices and the Fire TV line. Alexa can recognize various voices to establish personalized responses. It also applies the use of touch and speech to play games, hails an uber, and delivers the news (Sharda et al., 2020). Some of the things that Alexa can do include sending text messages, making phone calls, assessing shopping lists, do shopping, provide traffic real-time weather updates, use voice commands to manage smartphone activities, set alarms among many others.
The Alexa skill can be used to order drinks from Starbucks. To achieve this, the app integrates the use of NLP user interface. First, a user links their Amazon account to their Starbucks account. The skill however allows the user to make an order from one of the ten previously visited stores. A voice in this context is enough to place such an order. A few words such as “Alexa, open Starbucks” are enough to launch the process. From here, Alexa confirms to the user the usual order, the cost, and the store in which the order will be made available (Sharda et al., 2020). The next step allows the user to either cancel or confirm that particular order. Immediately the order is made and placed, the user can use the Starbucks app to confirm the time that will be consumed for the order to be prepared. Also, with the Alexa app, a new location can be selected to enhance convenience.
Reference
Sharda, R., Delen, D., Turban, E. (2020). Analytics, Data Science, & Artificial Intelligence: Systems for Decision Support 11E. ISBN: 978-0-13-519201-6