AiC Episode 74

In this episode, Teri welcomes Adva Levin, the founder and CEO of Pretzel Labs, a company that is creating some of the most engaging top-notch kids’ skills that are available today.

Welcome, Adva Levin!

Adva’s background is in writing, content strategy and conversation design. She started Pretzel Labs to create voice-first playful experiences for kids. She won the grand prize in the Amazon Alexa Kids Skill Competition for one of her kids’ skill and that skill was one of the top 25 skills of 2018.

Creating Alexa Skills for Kids

  • Alexa and other voice technology platforms sparked her imagination as a writer and she saw voice as a new creative medium.
  • She got an Alexa device and when people came to her house they would engage Alexa. Adults would ask more utility-based questions, but kids were more playful with Alexa and asked fun and imaginative questions. Adva saw it as a new entity or almost close to a family member for kids to interact with.

Actionable Tips for Kids Skills Developers

  • Children cannot be categorized into one group. There are different groups based on age, from 3 to 14 years. One has to decide what group they are developing their skill for.
  • One has to consider the kids’ attention span and what they will be doing while they are interacting with a skill.
  • One has to also consider whether the kids will interact with a skill while they are alone or with their parents and other family members. Adva’s skills, for example, are designed not only for kids but for the whole family to interact together.
  • Creating a persona: This is very relevant in the design of voice experiences. One has to think of what their skill is going to do, then start doing the design (what it would say, what it would listen to from users, etc.), and the last step is coming up with a way to create emotional engagement for users.

Kids Court

  • Amazon wanted to promote the kids’ category soon after it launched, by making a worldwide competition for kids’ skills.
  • This was Adva’s first experience in building a skill and it won the grand prize in the competition.

Kids Skills with Adva Levin of Pretzel Labs

Pretzel Labs’ Skills

  • They consider how families can use Alexa in their daily lives.
  • Adva thought about how Alexa can help families overcome some friction. She thought about how kids fight all the time and wondered how Alexa could be a judge. She came up with the idea for “Judge Lexy”, a little persona that lives inside Alexa with her own courtroom. Kids and parents are invited to enter “Kids Court” and tell Judge Lexy what happened. Judge Lexy then walks them through a trial. Kids learn about the process of a trial, and roles of the defendant, prosecutor, and witness. It’s all done very playfully and with a lot of humor. In the end, a verdict is given and whoever is guilty has to commit a dare-style sentence.
  • Kids Court has been featured widely all over the world and receives raving reviews.
  • Another one of Pretzel Labs’ skills is Freeze Dancers. It’s a dancing game for kids. It has silly dance moves to keep kids going and having fun.
  • They also have “Out the Door” and “Bedtime Hero” which help kids get ready in the morning and ready for bed respectively. They are for slightly younger kids aged between 4 and 8. They are meant to engage them more in the mundane tasks of putting on their clothes, brushing their teeth, and going to school. Parents don’t have to yell at their kids to do those things because, with Alexa, the kids get to do them in an adventurous, engaging and fun way.

Projects in Israel

  • Pretzel Labs has been working on a project with MindCET (Israel’s Tech Innovation Center) and the Israeli Ministry of Education to use Alexa in schools to encourage kids to learn conversational English skills.
  • Kids start to learn English from the 3rd Grade and they never really get the chance to speak English a lot or to practice speaking. They hear some English content from TV and music, and they get an English class about two or three times a week.
  • Alexa enables the kids to practise speaking English and enjoy it.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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