7/21

More skill testing today! I had my friend cook using Alexa to get a feel for how user friendly it would be. She knew very little about my app and had never worked with an Alexa before.

The biggest problem we ran into was that Alexa kept changing recipes or reseting. This is due to the fact that I currently have Alexa continuously listening for intents. I thought this would be the most helpful, since it enabled you to ask questions quickly ("Alexa, what's the next ingredient?" over and over again without having to ask Alexa to open RecipeHelper) but if we carried on with our conversation after setting the recipe, she would mistake it as a command. She would randomly switch recipes or reset the recipe depending on what she thought she heard us say.

Other than that, my friend thought it was pretty seamless. She could ask for each step and within that step, ask for the quantity of the ingredient (every ingredient was properly found except zucchini!).

I think I need to start looking at this app through the eyes of someone who will actually use it, which will probably be as an aid to the recipe itself. I'm going to have Alexa end the session unless a response is needed and I'm going to connect asking for specific steps to the pagination, so if you ask for step three and then ask for the next step, it'll take you to step 4 instead of step 1.

Just a reminder, I'm going out of town tomorrow for the entire week. I'll be on the beach so I'm doubtful that there will be good internet, but I will take my computer just in case. I don't plan on working, but I might continue with cleaning up my code and writing documentation!