WINNERS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED

Thank you to the 999 participants who competed in the challenge! There were over 350 unique skills across the various categories. Be sure to check them all out in the submission gallery and read about the winners on the Alexa Blog!

Our winners in the challenge were:

Jeff Bezos has said that the original inspiration for Alexa and the Amazon Echo was the Star Trek computer: a cloud-based voice service that can converse with you in a natural way, as well as take advantage of displays when available. That last part is important to us. Since we've launched the first Echo Show, we've learned a lot about how combining voice and visual experiences can make skills even more delightful, engaging, and simple for customers. And with the recent launch of the Alexa Presentation Language (APL), which helps developers build interactive voice-first experiences for tens of millions of devices, we're excited to see what developers do next. 

The Alexa Skills Challenge: Multimodal was a way for developers to create an Alexa skill using APL and build a voice-first visual experience for devices like the all new Echo Show, Echo Spot, and Fire TV. In addition to helping push the boundaries of what's possible with voice and visuals, they competed for up to $150,000 in prizes. Additionally, they earned a new Amazon device just by publishing an APL skill.

What makes a great multimodal skill?

People embrace voice because it’s simple, natural, and conversational. Multimodal skills add additional input and output options when a screen is present in order to: 

• Adapt skills to work on different devices. You can optimize your designs and experience based on the type of device to deliver the right experience, from focused personal information delivery on Echo Spot to communal, 7’ experiences on Fire TV.
• Add easily glance-able, complementary information. You can display images, text, and overlays to communicate requested information at a glance, and provide more detail than is possible with voice alone.
• Simplify navigation of large data sets. You can display large amounts of information and help people quickly review options and choose -- using scrolling and selection by voice or touch.
• Create immersive and delightful experiences. You can build engaging experiences that your customers can sit back and watch, or lean into to get things done.

What are the benefits of using Alexa Presentation Language (APL)?

APL is a new design language that enables you to create voice-first, visual Alexa skills that adapt to different device types. With APL, you can:

• Rich: build interactive voice-first experiences that include text, graphics, slideshows, and, soon, video content.
• Flexible: control your user experience by defining where visual elements are placed on-screen, and match the visual expression to your brand guidelines.
• Adaptable: optimize experiences for different Alexa devices for their unique characteristics
• Easy: take advantage of Amazon-supplied sample APL documents that are designed to work well across a broad range of different device types.

Looking for inspiration?  See the multimodal experiences other developers have already built with the Alexa Presentation Language.

NEW SAMPLE SKILL - SPACE EXPLORER

1. Alexa Skill Teardown: Building the Interaction Model for the Space Explorer Skill
2. New Alexa Skill Sample: Learn Multimodal Skill Design with Space Explorer

$150,000 in prizes

1. Register for the Alexa Skills Challenge.
2. Check out the portal, Getting, and the Resources page for tutorials and Alexa Skills Certification Checklist.
3. Learn more about the new Alexa Presentation Language and plan how to best leverage the technology for a great user experience. Check out our blog post.
4. Host your skill on AWS Lambda (recommended), or another hosting service of your choice.
5. Shoot your demo video and take screenshots of your functioning skill.
6. Submit your skill on alexamultimodal.devpost.com AND submit your skill for Alexa skill store certification before January 22, 2019 at 5:00pm EST.

• Quality of the Idea Using Alexa Presentation Language
  Including creativity and originality, and the ways in which the skill takes advantage of displays and touch when available with Alexa Presentation Language.
• Quality of the User Experience
  Including the visual design, whether it performs as expected, works well across device types, and more.
• Potential Impact of the Idea
  Including the extent to which the skill is widely useful, highly entertaining, and more.
• Quality of the Submission Package
  Including quality of the description, video demo, and any other materials submitted to Devpost.
• Customer Engagement (round 2 only)
  A variety of factors are considered such as new customers, recurring customers, customer ratings, and more.