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)

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed working through all the projects building exciting and interesting chatbots and voicebots. Great work! But remember, we have barely scratched the surface of what is yet to be unleashed. There is more to building chatbots and conversational UI than just plugging tools, services, and data together. It takes practice and a deeper understanding of underlying concepts to get the design right and build bots that give users a great experience. The user should be able to get the job done by having a conversation with the bot without having to think too much and with a smile on their face. Great conversational experience, the experience that the user gets when interacting with or at the thought of doing so, is what we should always aim for. And only with practice and mindful design can we achieve that.

Remember that this technology is evolving at a rapid pace...