Node+JS Interactive

OK Google, ask Alexa to check if Siri can recommend Cortana a movie to watch with Bixby. Voice assistants are one of the biggest emerging technologies in 2018. At NPR, our interest in voice-based interfaces is obvious: they're a natural fit for our audio-first content. But given that it's still such a new field, the development process is anything but straightforward. What's a Lambda, and do you have to use it? How does the Alexa platform differ from, say, Google Home, and can you develop one app for both? In this talk, we'll run through these confusing, high-level questions, and then go over some real-world code samples for a Node.js API that powers a voice-based UI. Finally, we'll discuss the mistakes we made, the things we wish we'd done differently, and the things we wish we'd known up front as we set out on our journey to build a next-generation voice UI framework in-house at NPR.