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)

Managing context 

In any conversation, the context of conversation needs to be managed. Context can be maintained by creating a local cache where the information transferred between the two dialogue partners can be stored. For instance, the user may tell the chatbot their food preferences, and this information can be stored in context for future reference if not used immediately. Another instance is in a conversation where the user is asking questions about a story. These questions may be incomplete and may need to be interpreted in terms of the information available in the context. 

In this section, we will explore how context can be recorded and utilized during the conversation in Chatfuel. Let's take the task of finding a restaurant as part of your tour guide chatbot. The conversation between the chatbot and the user might go as follows:

User : Find a restaurant...