Book Image

Voicebot and Chatbot Design

By : Rachel Batish
Book Image

Voicebot and Chatbot Design

By: Rachel Batish

Overview of this book

We are entering the age of conversational interfaces, where we will interact with AI bots using chat and voice. But how do we create a good conversation? How do we design and build voicebots and chatbots that can carry successful conversations in in the real world? In this book, Rachel Batish introduces us to the world of conversational applications, bots and AI. You’ll discover how - with little technical knowledge - you can build successful and meaningful conversational UIs. You’ll find detailed guidance on how to build and deploy bots on the leading conversational platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Facebook Messenger. You’ll then learn key design aspects for building conversational UIs that will really succeed and shine in front of humans. You’ll discover how your AI bots can become part of a meaningful conversation with humans, using techniques such as persona shaping, and tone analysis. For successful bots in the real world, you’ll explore important use-cases and examples where humans interact with bots. With examples across finance, travel, and e-commerce, you’ll see how you can create successful conversational UIs in any sector. Expand your horizons further as Rachel shares with you her insights into cutting-edge voicebot and chatbot technologies, and how the future might unfold. Join in right now and start building successful, high impact bots!
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Voicebot and Chatbot Design
Contributors
Preface
Other Book You May Enjoy
Index

What is conversational UI?


Broadly speaking, conversational UI is a new form of interaction with computers that tries to mimic a "natural human conversation." To understand what this means, we can turn to the good old Oxford Dictionary and search for the definition of a conversation:

con·ver·sa·tion

/ˌkänvərˈsāSH(ə)n/ noun

A talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.

On Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation), I found some interesting additions. There, conversation is defined a little more broadly: "An interactive communication between two or more people… the development of conversational skills and etiquette is an important part of socialization."

The development of conversational skills in a new language is a frequent focus of language teaching and learning. If we sum up the two definitions, we can agree that a conversation must be:

  1. Some type of communication (a talk)

  2. Between more than two people

  3. Interactive: ideas and thoughts must be exchanged

  4. Part of a socialization process

  5. Focused on learning and teaching

Now if we go back to our definition of conversational UI, we can easily identify the gaps between the classic definition of a conversation and what we define today as conversational UI.

Conversational UI, as opposed to the preceding definition:

  1. Doesn't have to be oral: it could be in writing (for example, chatbots).

  2. Is not just between people and is limited to two sides: in conversational UI, we have at least one form of a computer involved, and the conversation is limited to only two participants. Rarely does conversational UI involve more than two participants.

  3. Is less interactive and it's hard to say whether ideas are exchanged between the two participants.

  4. Is thought of as unsocialized, since we are dealing with computers and not people. However, the two main components are already there.

  5. Is a medium of communication that enables natural conversation between two entities.

  6. Is about learning and teaching by leveraging Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL), as computers continue to learn and develop their understanding capabilities.

The gaps that we identified above represent the future evolution of conversational UI. While it seems like there is a long way to go for us to actually be able to truly replace human-to-human interaction, with today's and future technologies, those gaps will close sooner than we think. However, let's start by taking a look at how human-computer interaction evolved over the last 50 years, before we try to predict the future.