Book Image

Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development

By : Srini Janarthanam
Book Image

Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development

By: Srini Janarthanam

Overview of this book

Conversation as an interface is the best way for machines to interact with us using the universally accepted human tool that is language. Chatbots and voice user interfaces are two flavors of conversational UIs. Chatbots are real-time, data-driven answer engines that talk in natural language and are context-aware. Voice user interfaces are driven by voice and can understand and respond to users using speech. This book covers both types of conversational UIs by leveraging APIs from multiple platforms. We'll take a project-based approach to understand how these UIs are built and the best use cases for deploying them. We'll start by building a simple messaging bot from the Facebook Messenger API to understand the basics of bot building. Then we move on to creating a Task model that can perform complex tasks such as ordering and planning events with the newly-acquired-by-Google Dialogflow and Microsoft Bot framework. We then turn to voice-enabled UIs that are capable of interacting with users using speech with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. By the end of the book, you will have created your own line of chatbots and voice UIs for multiple leading platforms.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Warming up with a quotes bot

  1. To get started, you need an Amazon developer account. Sign up at the following URL:

https://developer.amazon.com/home.html

  1. Once you have signed up, log in. 
  2. On the dashboard, click ALEXA:
  1. Choose Alexa Skills Kit and click Get Started:
  1. To create a new skill, click Add a New Skill:

Creating an Alexa skill is a two-phase process:

  1. Configuring the skill on the developer portal.
  2. Creating a conversation management module.

Configuring your skill

In order to explore the toolkit, we will use an example scenario of building a skill that delivers an inspiring quote every day. So the conversation between the user and Alexa may go like the following:

User: Alexa! Ask quote...