The Alexa Skills Challenge: Tech for Good is an opportunity for you to create an Alexa skill that has a positive impact on the environment, your local community, and the world. Your skill can be in any category, as long as it has a positive impact on customers.

In addition to creating a skill that benefits society, participants have the opportunity to compete for $122,000 in prizes, and the chance to direct a donation of $20,000 from Amazon to one of 11 nonprofit organizations.

Use Voice to Make A Positive Impact

Alexa skills can simplify almost any imaginable task through voice commands. This challenge is your opportunity to build skills that have a positive effect on the world, whether it be helping someone save energy or helping those in need after a natural disaster strikes. For example, this year Amazon launched Alexa Donations with Amazon Pay, which enables customers to donate directly to charities through an Alexa skill. This is just one of many examples of how a voice experience can have a positive impact on society—your Alexa skill can be next.

Looking for inspiration? We believe great submissions for this challenge will have the following things in common:

• They solve a customer problem. For example, quality Tech for Good skills can help customers gain access to information faster or leverage public data and resources. By allowing customers to access more information via voice, they are able to complete tasks more efficiently.
• They inspire customers to learn and take action. For example, quality Tech for Good skills can influence customers to adapt and learn over time. By giving customers actionable tasks, using your skill is more likely to become a daily habit.
• They deliver a seamless user experience via voice. For example, quality Tech for Good skills are simple to use and understand. If your skill is too complex, you risk losing the customer’s attention and they will be less likely to use your skill again.

Check out the new judging criteria below for more guidance. We can't wait to try out what you build! 

$122,000 in prizes

HOW TO ENTER (AGE 18+)

1. Register for the Alexa Skills Challenge: Tech for Good on Devpost.
2. Sign up for an Amazon Developer Account.
3. Review the Resources page to learn more about the Alexa Skills Kit, designing for voice, and submitting your skill for certification.
4. Build your skill!
5. Host your skill on AWS Lambda (recommended), or another hosting service of your choice. You may apply to receive $100 in AWS promotional credit.
6. Include your Skill ID from the Skill Information tab in your developer account.
7. Shoot your demo video and take screenshots of your functioning skill. Review the rules for video requirements!
8. Submit your skill on devpost.com AND submit your skill for U.S. Alexa Skill Store certification before 5:00pm ET on September 17, 2018. Your skill must pass certification before 5:00pm ET on October 1, 2018.
9. Have questions? Contact us at support@devpost.com.

HOW TO ENTER (AGE 13 - 17 FROM THE U.S. AND CANADA ONLY) CLICK HERE

• [15 pts] Quality of the Idea
  Including creativity and originality, and the potential positive impact of the Skill.
• [15 pts] Technical Implementation of the Idea
  Including how well the idea was executed by the developer, the complexity of the services used to build the skill, the depth of integrations with data or third-party APIs, whether it performs as expected, and more.
• [25 pts] Potential for Engagement
  Including the extent to which the Skill is widely useful, engages user over multiple turns (dialogues), might be extended to other scenarios, and more.
• [25 pts] Quality of User Experience
  Including how natural the experience is to the user.
• [20 pts] Habit-forming ability
  Including how likely the Skill could change a customer’s daily habits, impact their day-to-day use, and potentially become habit-forming over time.
• [10 pts] Customer Engagement (Round 2 only)
  Including a variety of factors such as the type and duration of usage, the number of new and recurring customers, customer ratings, and more.