Smart Speaker Programming

At work, we decided to start on developing a poc for smart speaker app for our clients. We started with basic design, the way we approach regular development. How ever, over the course of developing the POC, we learn a lot .

One thing for sure with developing actions or skills for smart speaker is that, we need to think in unstructured way. After years of honing our skills to think structural, approach a problem in a structured way and limiting the options for user, it's different to find us thinking differently. These apps are surely meant to be user oriented.  Thinking a different way and making it work for all the young users out there who take technology for granted and are so used to it that loving without it is unthinkable for them.

Doing a smart speaker app that meets their demands and still secured enough, that's a challenge.

Games that help us learn - 1

English Grammar, thats a dreaded subject in schools and university. More for people who does not have English as mother tongue. I remember how I used to dread at the words "Nouns", "Pronouns", "Verbs", "Adverbs", "Adjectives", etc. I don't understand how I fared through all those examinations at School and University with good score.

I first came across these terms when I was still in Pre-teens. I remembered Nouns very well, cos, we used to play this game "Name-Place-Thing-Animal", with cousins and friends during week ends and holidays. The rule of the game is that for every round of the game, we pick up a letter. All the players should be filling in all the 4 columns with nouns, for a person's name, Place name, a thing's name and an animal's name. Now, the names should be valid, and known to atleast one other person. No reference of Dictionary is allowed. And then, while checking the score, we get 10/5/0/-5 points as below:

1. For every valid name, if its not mentioned by any other player, we get 10 points.
2. For every valid name that is written by more than one player, we get 5 points
3. For every invalid name, its -5 points.
4. We dont score any points for columns that are left blank.

The highest scorer is the winner. We used to have lot of arguments and fights while playing this game. Though we did not realise the importance of this game as kids, as a grown up adult, I realise its importance and the main role it played in our lives.

We used to refer to dictionary for clearing the arguments. Any item that does not have "n" beside is not a noun, and hence not a valid entry in the game. This way, we learnt how to use a dictionary and make good use of it.