Learning by Building: Our Journey Exploring AWS Serverless, Dual Alexa Assistants, and PWAs
Discover how a team of student builders explored AWS serverless microservices to synchronize two Amazon Alexa Skills with a Progressive Web App (PWA) for real-time store management—all operating within the AWS Free Tier at $0.00 cost.
Series: Student AWS Projects (1 article)
- 1Learning by Building: Our Journey Exploring AWS Serverless, Dual Alexa Assistants, and PWAs This article
1. Introduction: Driven by Curiosity within Our Student Research Seedbed
As technology enthusiasts and student researchers preparing to present our project proposal at our university's upcoming Research Seedbed meeting (Semillero de Investigación), we frequently asked ourselves: How do modern retail systems seamlessly synchronize voice commands with real-time visual displays in the cloud?
We didn't have prior experience building complex voice-driven architectures, nor did we have a corporate budget. But we possessed something much more valuable: genuine curiosity, an eagerness to learn by doing, and a clear goal to demonstrate what a three-person team can accomplish using Amazon Web Services (AWS) within our research group.
This project represents our hands-on exploration into multimodal interaction (Voice UI + Graphical UI). We set out to design a smart store prototype where two Amazon Alexa devices (serving as Customer Storefront and Kitchen Dispatch) communicate in real time with a Progressive Web App (PWA) via serverless AWS microservices—all while maintaining a strict $0.00 operating cost utilizing the AWS Free Tier.
2. What We Are Seeking to Understand and Build
In traditional retail environments, voice interactions lack visual feedback, while screens lack hands-free accessibility. Combining voice assistants with graphical interfaces dramatically improves operational speed and user satisfaction. Through this research seedbed initiative, our team seeks to answer three core questions:
- Event-Driven Synchronization: How efficiently can AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB route events between two independent Alexa Skills and a web frontend with minimal latency?
- Multimodal User Experience (UI/VUI): How can a customer order via speech or touch, while kitchen staff receive both verbal announcements and visual screen updates simultaneously?
- Cloud Financial Discipline: How can student developers leverage AWS Budgets and CloudWatch guardrails to experiment freely without incurring unexpected cloud charges?
3. Proposed Architecture & System Workflow
Our conceptual design decouples presentation channels from core business logic using an event-driven serverless pattern:
System Roles and Components
- Alexa Skill 1 (Front-Office / Storefront): Configured via the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) to process voice requests from customers (e.g., "Alexa, open My Store and order a coffee").
- Alexa Skill 2 (Back-Office / Kitchen): Operational assistant that verbally announces new orders in the kitchen and allows order status updates via voice (e.g., "Alexa, mark order #101 as ready").
- Progressive Web App (PWA): An interactive web interface (HTML/JS) that queries API Gateway to display a live digital kitchen display system (KDS) on a tablet or screen.
- AWS Serverless Core: AWS Lambda functions that execute business logic and store/update order states in Amazon DynamoDB.
Series: Student AWS Projects (1 article)
- 1Learning by Building: Our Journey Exploring AWS Serverless, Dual Alexa Assistants, and PWAs This article
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