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)

My TV guide

Let us move on to a more challenging project: building an Alexa skill to get info on TV shows. In this task, we will build a TV skill that will enable Alexa to answer questions about TV shows. For instance, Alexa will be able to answer the following questions.

  • What's next on BBC One?
  • What's on ITV now?
  • What is the show about?
  • Whats on ITV at 2pm?

Building the interaction model

In addition to the concepts we explored in the QuoteMaster skill, in this task we will explore more complex conversational elements: slots. Let us follow the seven step process from earlier to create a new skill called My TV:

  1. Fill in the Skill Information and move on to the Interaction Model page.
  2. Click Launch Skill Builder...