This is the first of hopefully a regular series of posts about developing user interfaces and experiences for the fast-growing field of voice-powered smart assistants.

As with most projects, it helps to establish context and set some goals for any activity. In this case, I hope to target the ongoing Actions For Google Challenge for a submission in late August.

That gives me approximately 10 weeks to explore the broader domain but also pay closer attention to the specific tools and design guidelines required to make such conversational experiences feel frictionless and magical.

The other platform I also hope to explore is Amazon’s Alexa. It helps that they also have an ongoing competition for June, focused on educating developers to build a simple Alexa Skill.

There are other platforms that need to be explored in this space, but for a start, I hope to use Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa as my two core targets for advancing and amplifying my understanding of smart assistants.

About VoiceCamp

VoiceCamp is a subset of my planned StudyCamp series focused on providing not just tutorials and coverage of a specific technology, but potentially creating one or more trails that can be used within communities (like my Google Developer Group chapters in NYC and Hudson Valley) to provide structured exploration and learning in a study group setting.