Alexa is a voice assistant platform from Amazon, that makes it easy to build voice-driven applications. Firebase is a comprehensive app platform from Google that makes it easy to do… a lot of things. Taking advantage of both makes it easy to build Alexa skills that take the conversation well beyond the Alexa environment itself.

We'll walk through the setup and architecture of a simple skill that takes advantage of the Alexa platform to interact with applications outside the Alexa environment, with activity in the conversation with Alexa being reflected in the changing display of a single-page web application.

What does it mean to develop a good interaction - without any visual aids? Natural Language Processing (NLP) has opened the door to communicating vocally, and made more easy to develop with popular platform APIs and in-home devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo. How do you start thinking about building for one of these platforms, or all of them? We will go over what has to be kept in mind for the development life cycle and empower you to make the architectural decisions that make sense with this emerging software skillset. This is a high level architectural and voice design discussion to avoid pitfalls and enhance user delight with your chatbot or voice skill.