Matchbox used Alexa to bring the power of Ex-IQ’s NoteCast service to voice, enabling users to interact with a podcast as it plays, by asking to highlight a quote, or share a snippet, or save an interesting exchange to a notepad.
Starting with a voice-first approach to giving users the best interactive podcast experience, Matchbox identified the necessary infrastructure work to be done. Building on the existing Ex-IQ back-end, we added the right authentication and APIs to support an Alexa skill.
For the end user, after linking their account, the NoteCast Alexa skill allows playback of any subscribed podcast and then lights up the experience with entirely novel features: ask Alexa to ‘highlight that’ – ask Alexa to add a note to something I just heard.
On the back-end, the NoteCast service identifies the position in the stream and sends that audio snippet to Amazon’s transcription service to generate text for the user, who can refer to it in the NoteCast app or website, and share it with friends or on social networks.
This is genuine innovation and utility both in voice UX and in audio content consumption. Beyond the novel approach, our work with NoteCast was a breakthrough in their ability to tell a rich and compelling story about remote learning, audio and voice experiences, and interactive content.
