Voice-managed access to audiobook catalogues on Alexa
with EDRLab and OpenDialog
BAckground
EDRLab is an international, non-profit development laboratory, working on the deployment of an open, interoperable and accessible digital publishing ecosystem, worldwide. EDRLab’s works a number of not-for-profits and NGOs, from across the globe , who focus on accessibility for those with visual impairments.
They approached us with an interesting challenge, based on an initial exploration of the field through Google Assistant, they wanted to make their conversational model more robust, flexible and portable across different platforms, with a specific focus on Amazon Alexa as a next step.
The goal was to create a reusable solution that would give users voice-managed access to audiobook catalogues, owned by EDRLabs partner organisations, utilising Amazon Alexa combined with OpenDialog.
the Solution
The Alexa skill’s conversational experience, including dialogue and context management specifically, is created and managed through the OpenDialog conversation designer, whilst Alexa/Amazon handles the delivery to users via its devices along with the NLP and Intent recognition.
Utilising OpenDialog’s conversation builder and engine, EDRLabs was able to build complex and reusable, multi-lingual conversations which were able to be served to the customer based on their location and chosen language.
Our topic-centric model moves customers away from linear flow charts which constrain users to say certain things at a certain time, a topic-centric model allows for more flexibility. With that in mind, we also designed the journey, so that throughout the experience we could adapt and deliver different messaging. OpenDialog’s context-aware model allowed for interrupt-ability and redirection without extensive coding.
