The Conversational Interface
The Conversational Interface
Partner at Digital Intent and Founder Equity. Kellogg Professor. Very pale.
Hi.
Product strategy, user experience design, web/mobile/bot development anddigital marketing under one roof.
Over 60 team members, with offices in Chicago, Dallas and Columbus.
#620 on the 2015 Inc. 5000, with over 735% revenue growth in 3 years.
An innovation team in a box.
What
Us learning how to interact with computers.
Computers learning how to interact with us.
Conversational
Interfaces
Bots
Conversational
Interfaces
Retrieval based models
Generative models
vs.
Why
Messaging apps have surpassed social networks.
3 billion users
2.5 billion users
Monthly actives for big 4 social networking apps vs. big 4 messaging apps. Source.
2012 2016
1) Feels more personal than apps.
“Language is the most powerful, useful, effective
communication technology ever, period.”
Source
1) Feels more personal than apps.
2) More appropriate for many interactions.
“I like the idea of not having to download an entire app.”
0 Apps
1 App
2 Apps
3 Apps
4 Apps
5-7 Apps
8+ Apps
Most people download 0 new apps per month.
“I actually prefer giving my information to a bot than a person
because there’s no judgment.”
“Sometimes I don’t want to browse - I just want you to
tell me what to get.”
“My kids text all day, but they don’t use email at all.”
1) Feels more personal than apps.
2) More appropriate for many interactions.
3) Available wherever a user wants.
“Conversational commerce is about delivering
convenience, personalization, and decision
support while people are on the go, with only
partial attention to spare.”
Source
“Alexa, ask Uber to request a ride”
I need to return an item.
I’m looking for a black cocktail dress.
1) Feels more personal than apps.
2) More appropriate for many interactions.
3) Available wherever a user wants.
4) Can make non-experts experts.
Messaging apps become the new home screen
How
Building a bot is easy. Building an intelligent
one is hard.
Use a retrieval-based model (for now).
Narrow the domain.
“The challenge in plugging an AI into a
'conversational' chat bot interface is that you
don't have HAL 9000 but are in some sense
pretending to the user that you do.”
Source
Spend a lot of time error handling.
“When it comes to interactions with bot,
alignment should be the highest-order user
experience objective.”
Source
“With chat, the UI is the log file. Debugging
becomes very easy. And every user interaction is
product feedback.”
Source
Acquisition Users visit the site.
Activation Users have a good first experience.
Retention Users come back.
Referral Users tell their friends.
Revenue
We don’t know how new apps will be discovered.
Simplify data entry.
Avoid replicating phone trees.
Curation appears to be more effective (for now).
Natural language filtering.
Image-based search.
Bake in delighters.
Context is huge.
Develop a relationship with the customer over time.
Use notifications intelligently and prudently.
Nobody knows yet.
Group shopping?
When
1) PR opportunity.
2) Capitalize on unsaturated channel.
3) Barriers to entry are lower.
4) Figure out what works faster.
5) More data = smarter bots.
Build
Measure
Learn
Ideas
ProductData
Build version one now. Learn what works.
Repeat.
Let’s build something great together.
Thanks for talking today. To learn more about how DI can help with your digital innovation needs, contact Sean at 312-213-0498 or [email protected]