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Ilarna Nche Ilarna Nche is an award-winning expert on the technical aspects of building voice applications for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Samsung Bixby. She designs and develops voice apps for clients who want to capitalize on the branding power that voice products bring to the digital content mix. Ilarna and I talked about: her path into the voice design industry how easy it is, even for someone new to the field, to develop voice applications how her team at Matchbox works together and with their clients how voice creates new customer experience opportunities some of the uses and situations that are well-suited to voice apps: games, wellness, cooking, car travel, etc. some of the difference between voice platforms like Amazon Alexa and Samsung Bixby how less-technical development tools like Jovo and Voiceflow permit folks with voice-design skills to build apps on their own the wide range of platforms where voice apps can show up - Bixby for example in Samsung appliances - and the proliferation of devices designed for voice interaction the importance of staying on top of trends in the fast-moving world of voice the basics of the technical implementation of voice recognition, natural language understanding, and generating query responses the future of voice technologies and applications how to get started designing your own voice applications Ilarna's Bio Ilarna Nche is an award winning Alexa Champion and Bixby Premier Developer working as a Senior Software Engineer at matchbox.io. She has a huge portfolio of voice applications across Google, Bixby, and Alexa and is an expert and thought leader in the voice & conversation design field, from both a development and design perspective. Links Mentioned in the Podcast Jovo Voiceflow Question of the Day Find My Phone Music Bop Adventures echo frames echo loop Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/mMOUja0bVb4 Podcast Intro Transcript When she left university just a couple of years ago, Ilarna Nche started experimenting with voice technologies like Alexa and Bixby. She learned very quickly that her technology and design skills were a great fit for this new medium. Voice tech also plays to her preference for voice interactions over graphical interfaces. In just two years, Ilarna has already earned several industry awards for her work. But she's quick to point out that you don't have to be a technical expert like her to build engaging voice experiences. Interview Transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 72 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us, Ilarna Nche. Ilarna is a senior software engineer at Matchbox.io. She's also won a number of awards for her work as a voice interaction designer. So welcome to Ilarna. Can you tell the folks a little bit more about yourself, your background? Ilarna: Hi everyone. Yes. So yeah, my name's Ilarna and as Larry says, I am a senior software engineer at Matchbox. But I started off my voice journey, building apps after university, where I just wanted to get to know the voice industry. It was completely new and I really enjoyed it, mostly because I didn't have to design anything visually because that's where I lack in my skills. So just to have this application where you could basically create an application without any visual interaction, was something that really attracted me to the voice industry. And so I've made over 50, 70 applications on Amazon Alexa, and that's where it started off for me. Ilarna: And I managed to create an app called Music Bop Adventures, which won an award for being a kids app and that helped me with the money, the prize money I won there, it made me realize, there might be a future in this. So I spent the year after university, basically building all these voice applications, and then I managed to become a Bixby partner with Samsung ...