We are on a mission to decipher language, which is the most complex type of data that ever existed

Dashbot

Introduction With conversational products and interfaces, product creators now have to imagine an interaction where the screen plays an ancillary role. As a consequence, the majority of the best practices and principles of a good user experience need to be redefined, if at all used. Even within conversational interfaces, we don’t speak same way we write. We don’t pronounce all words in the sentence, combine words, don’t say some words at all and huge part of our communication is non-verbal. Hence the MVP for conversational interfaces needs to be different from that for any other product. It’s needed to set good expectations of what it can do for a user. Build Out Conversations, Not User Stories In my experience, building user stories for conversational interfaces turns out very clunky, and a better approach is to build out possible conversations between the end user and the product. Focusing on the bookends of the conversations helps you to understand the trigger and the goal. Improving the user experience provides customers the solution to their problems with as little friction as possible. Improving confidence levels and increasing the scope of utterances is the key way to reduce friction for conversational UI. From learning all the different ways that someone may ask for their account balance, to increasing the number of tasks that can be performed autonomously, every challenging question that a customer asks is an opportunity for us to learn and improve. Here are some of the things to keep in mind when building out these conversations: High-level flows Once you have a few sample dialogs, you can abstract the flow and logic of the conversation. This provides the structure of your conversational interface. Good designs balance the need for clearly defined user paths with the users’ desire for shortcuts directly to what they want. Start with the most ideal or optimal path that you envisage with the users. This is perfect alignment between customer actions and your designed intent. Then expand the path as you go along. Adapt to What Users would Naturally Say The beauty of conversational interfaces is that it comes naturally to users and they don’t have to learn how to use them. The product should to adapt to the user’s word choices, instead of forcing the user to memorize a set of commands. It’s easier, and more natural, for users to respond to a narrow-focus question (e.g., “Does that work for you?”) than to be taught what to say (e.g., “If that works, say ‘yes.”). Provide Cues A bot should drive the conversation forward and at times even restrict it. There are some easy ways to help the user stay within guardrails. Visually, you can use buttons or quick replies (FB Messenger and Slack supports this) to nudge them in the right direction. Consider suggesting things to do; this will help users discover additional functionality. “Hey bot, book a table.” “Table reserved. Would you like me to order an Uber?”. Bot interactions are a bit like the traditional e-commerce flows. We should constantly keep the user updated and help them move forward, while avoiding overwhelming the user with a wall of information. Interactions Should Be Simple The number of paths a conversation can take increases the potential for dead ends. It is better to limit the functionality and nudge the user down a particular path. A simple solution is to use structured messages to guide the users. Rather than asking the end user to type “yes” or “no,” show a structured message with two buttons. Focus on Spoken Conversations When starting, it is better to focus on just the spoken conversation, without the technical distractions of code notation, complex flow diagrams, screen size etc. Getting the flow right is easier if everything is in one place. As you expand to other devices like mobile phones, pieces will move out of the spoken prompts and into the display prompts, chips, and visuals. Handling errors Conversational interfaces can face the following 3 types of errors: No Input: The product did not record the user’s input. System error: Error in fulfilment of the user prompt. No Match: The Action couldn’t interpret the user’s response in context. ‘No Match’ error is a little trickier and needs to be handled well in the conversations. Here are a few possible causes of No Match errors. Prompt: What time works for you? User: Sometime late in the evening? Prompt: Sorry, what time? (The user says something relevant to the context, but the product doesn’t understand it.) Prompt: What time works for you? User: What’s the weather like? Prompt: Sorry, what time? (The user wants to switch topics entirely.) In each context, it is important consider why the user might be having difficulty. Then, in the subsequent prompt, include additional support in the form of options or additional information. E.g. Prompt: What time works for you? User: Sometime late in the evening? Prompt: Sorry, we have two time slots. One in the afternoon between 1 pm and 2 pm and the other in evening between 4 pm and 5 pm. Now, what works for you. If there is a ‘No Match’ even after the second attempt, end the conversation to avoid further user frustration and offer a substitute or alternative method for follow up. E.g. Prompt: Sorry, I’m still having trouble, so you may want to visit our website instead. Good error handling is context-specific. Even though you’re asking for the same information, the conversational context is different on the second or third attempt. In order to play the right error prompt for the context, you’ll need to keep track of how many, and what type of, errors have occurred. Randomize Prompts When Appropriate Craft a variety of responses just like a person would. This makes the conversation feel more natural and keeps the experience from getting stale. E.g. randomize your first prompt with Hi, Hello, Hey, Welcome etc. Right mix of Conversational Components Conversational components are all the things that make up a prompt, like acknowledgements or questions. They also include chips, which are used to continue or pivot the conversation. Prompts and chips are the core of the conversational interaction and should be designed for every turn in the dialog. lists out the different conversational components that can be used in a prompt. Design guidelines with Google Be concise and relevant The conversational interface is also linear, and unlike GUIs, there’s no way to skim over the information. By forcing users to uninformative and irrelevant verbiage, you are unnecessarily wasting their time and testing their patience. People do not appreciate taking extra time or jumping through hoops to find things out or to get things done. Successful conversational interface design therefore should be brief and concise. Graceful Exits Make sure that the user can leave the current conversation flow. Whether it’s typing “quit”, timing out, or even erroring out. The bot should always allow you to exit gracefully without making the user feel guilty. All About Context Once you have generated potential use cases and filtered them against real business goals, you next need to answer a few questions about your target users, such as the customer’s identity, feedback, the channel used for contact, date, time, location, and other information in real time. All these questions will influence the implementation of a conversational interface experience. By analyzing all that data using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the bot can anticipate customer needs. In 2D design contexts, you can watch a user interact with your app — scrolling, tapping buttons, typing but in conversational product design, you have to look at the broader user context. Intent is easier to express through words than a hamburger menu, but natural language is harder to interpret than a click. Over time, it gets easier by understanding context and observing user behavior. It is one thing to train humans to input commands that a computer understands. It is a completely other process to teach a computer to map natural human language inputs to intent. Mapping natural language to intent is the first layer to conversational UI. Leverage Platform Capabilities Bots are completely different from platform to platform as well. All the platforms have different functionality. They all have different feature sets or capabilities. Alexa is a voice-first experience. Alexa’s versions of apps are called ‘skills’ — the idea being that you can teach your Alexa to do something new by enabling a new ‘skill’, created by a third party. Google’s Assistant is more of a platform: ‘Actions’ (Google’s version of ‘skills’) can be either voice-activated, tapped on or typed to. A hybrid voice, text and type interface, Assistant lets you use whatever method suits you in your current context and move between methods seamlessly. This also means Assistant is available on a wider range of form factors, from smart speakers to watches to smartphones to TVs. Facebook Messenger is a chat platform, augmented with a wide selection of customisable widgets allowing users to shortcut conversations and quickly get stuff done. It’s really easy to bring a Messenger chatbot into a human conversation to help you get stuff done. A conversational product should try to get the most out of the platform it is on. Not just NLP, but also prediction engine When one person asks another a question, it takes an average of 200 milliseconds for them to respond. This is so fast that we can’t even hear the pause. In fact, it’s faster than our brains actually work. It takes the brain about half a second to retrieve the words to say something, which means that in conversation, one person is gearing up to speak before the other is even finished. By listening to the tone, grammar, and content of another’s speech, we can predict when they’ll be done Monitor Health of the Bot The older analytics tools out there don’t cut it when it comes to bots, so it’s important to do a deep dive and not just plug in something off-the-shelf. There are new players, like Botmetrics and Dashbot, who are building the tools for bots from first principles, and they are improving everyday. But even they may not provide all the information / functionality you need, and you might end up with your data being silo-ed and inaccessible. The entire funnel is wrought with ways for things to go wrong. Given this range of possible user inputs, bots often misinterpret or simply can’t determine what the user wants. Examine the previous prompts to see where you could make some clarifications. Was the call to action clear? Confusion Triggers: Knowing the average conversation steps enable you to start segmenting good or bad experiences between the user and the bot. A conversation step is a single back-and-forth exchange between user and bot. Your average steps will be different depending on the type of the bot. Conversations that either significantly exceed or fall short of the average conversation step usually indicate a bad user experience. Either a user gave up too quickly or a bot took too long to complete a user’s goal. Conversation Steps: Conversation Flow: Pay attention to the way users naturally ask for things. Does the flow make users feel like they can only provide one piece of information at a time, or does it encourage them to provide multiple details in one sentence? Look for places where users look confused or are unsure of what to say or do. Users might say something you didn’t expect. Take note of it and add handling for it in your design. Signs of frustration or impatience show that the interaction is too long-winded. Review your prompts to see if you can be more concise. Observe who’s speaking the most and whether users seem to be in control of the conversation : Associated with the number of average steps is the average number of conversations per user. This indicates engagement with the bot. 4. Conversations Per User : If your bot supports both push and pull interactions, then you will want to compare the differences in how users interact with your bot. Active users will consume messages sent by the bot, whereas engaged users will respond. This is important because you can learn from users who are engaged. These are your happy users that are leaning into the experience. You will want to accommodate these types of conversations. 5. Active vs. Engaged Users : Know how long it takes for your bot to respond. Know the latency period between command and response. This impacts the overall user experience. You’re looking for median time as well as outliers here. 6. Response Time A bot should save time and relieve stress by reducing friction and effort. ​Otherwise it is not much better than the website or app that came before it. Integrations and contextual relevancy are key elements to the experience. A Hybrid Experience Is Okay It’s a mistake to believe a conversational design means every user input and output has to be handled in a purely chat format. Chatbots live within messaging apps and users are already accustomed to communicating with friends using text, but text input is not efficient for all use cases. The GUI replaced the text-based terminal for a reason and some tasks like browsing and selecting is faster with touch or click. Whenever it makes sense, it’s fine to consider a hybrid approach and use other interactive elements within the conversation (e.g. buttons, cards, forms) to help users complete their goals faster and with less friction. Over-reliance on structured messages, however, will feel artificial as you lose the conversational element. Conclusion Designing from first principles is the only way to avoid fundamental usability problems especially because it is a whole new paradigm of user experience. It can be a reasonably safe assumption in web or mobile apps because people have learnt the standard UIs and gestures, but not in the conversational interface world. Conversational products relate to delivering service over voice and messaging interfaces, but it also implies a different philosophy when it comes to product development, which is much more about understanding the context, constant iteration and constant A/B testing.

Building Conversational Products & Interfaces

WTF? Am I living in the future? I‘m pretty sure I just experienced the future of money while in Dash’s Slack community, and I have to admit, it was crazy! For those of you who might be confused by certain parts of my title, let me break it down. is an app that allows people to work on projects remotely. It’s used by global teams, companies and organizations. I’m familiar with Slack because when I was a writer for , they used the slack app for communication purposes. It makes organizing and group messaging a lot easier to manage than email. Slack Interesting Engineering I didn’t receive the tip in $USD. I received it in digital cash, called which was equivalent to $60. It’s similar to Bitcoin but has some features that Bitcoin doesn’t have. Dash An electronic wallet is a place where Dash or other digital smart coins can be sent and held. Think of it like an email address, except the content in that address is money, not messages. But it’s kind of the same concept as email as far as the addresses go. It’s a lot more secure than email, though, because it has security features that email doesn’t have. So, how did I find myself in a Slack chat room, telling a robot to send money to my electronic wallet? This sounds insane, doesn’t it? A few days ago I began researching this new digital cash called Dash. I had noticed the price of Dash had gone up a lot recently and I wanted to understand why. Before the recent spike, you could buy one Dash for $20, but now one Dash is worth $60. In other words, if you had purchased 10 Dash when it was $20 each, spending $200, you could sell your 10 Dash for $60 now, which would amount to $600. You would have just made $400 in profit. This sounds crazy doesn’t it? Digital currencies are like start-up companies and they are all competing for your business. What’s their business? Currency. There’s now a market for currency, just like there is for shoes, cars and coffee. These new digital currencies can experience huge growth spurts which makes early investors a lot of money. They can also experience swift declines, too. The main reason I’m seriously looking into Dash is because early Bitcoin pioneers are saying that Dash has huge potential to be embraced by the mainstream. Dash’s organizational structure is more suitable for mainstream adoption because their community has one thing that most digital currency communities lack: cohesion. Even Bitcoin’s community is divided right now, which makes investors and people like me nervous about Bitcoin’s future. I recently wrote a Medium article that explains and also made a that included a segment about Dash. The response I got from the Dash community was overwhelmingly positive. I created a Twitter Moment with the title, which was shared on the official Twitter page. Not long after this I was contacted by a journalist about why I have been buying Dash. And then the next day sent me an invite to Dash’s Slack channel via Twitter. I accepted the invite almost instantaneously, deciding to follow the natural course of synergy. Dash to newbies parody video What is DASH? Dash: Detailed Bloomberg News Tao of Satoshi Anyway, when I arrived into the Dash Slack community, I was welcomed very warmly. My video had been shared in the #dash_talk channel and people seemed honestly amused that I had shown up so quickly to the Slack channel. Slack app logo If you’ve never been in a Slack chat channel before, you should try it out. There are many different kinds of bots in Slack, all of which have different functions. There are welcoming bots, so when a new member enters a chat room, they are welcomed immediately. There are also info bots that provide current stats or data on particular topics. There are bots that can send money to electronic wallets, too. The one I interacted with was called @dashbot and apparently it’s the production version of Tipbot. The bots are mostly friendly and serve some functions that are considered too mundane for humans. So, after my warm welcome and introductory greetings, the Dash community members began doing something that was completely foreign to me: They began sending me tips in the form of Dash digital coins! I was suddenly flooded with many tips, I think from 5 different people. It was crazy! I had no clue what to do with the tips because this was the first time I’d experienced this! Here is what @dashbot said to me: “Hi there @stellabelle, you just received .02 Dash from @UserA ! This message was used to send the tip: tip @stellabelle .02 dash (clapping hands emoticon). tell the bot to withdraw an amount to an address. You can also use all to withdraw your complete balance (minus the transaction fee). @DashBot withdraw 1 DASH to XekiLaxnqpFb2m4NQAEcsKutZcZgcyfo6W I’d never received a digital cash tip before in Slack and I certainly had never told a bot to send me money! After the fifth member sent me a tip, I decided it was time to try telling the bot to send the money to my Dash address. My first attempt wasn’t perfectly executed, but the bot understood what I wanted to do. Here’s the exchange I had with @dashbot: Me: withdraw all DASH to XekiLaxnqpFb2m4NQAEcsKutZcZgcyfo6W @dashbot: @stellabelle we don’t support that currency yet! You want me to withdraw .14 DASH to XekiLaxnqpFb2m4NQAEcsKutZcZgcyfo6W. Is this correct (yes/no)? Me: yes @dashbot: Great! I will continue……. Withdrawal of .139900000 Dash to XekiLaxnqpFb2m4NQAEcsKutZcZgcyfo6W transaction: link here I’m not sure why @dashbot didn’t understand my command, but I was happy to discover that @dashbot was pretty intuitive and knew what I wanted done. The thing I noticed with this bizarre and futuristic experience was that the friction has been completely removed when sending money from person to person. The only thing remotely similar to this would be PayPal, but even with PayPal, you’d still have to log into your account then send your money through PayPal’s website. This new digital cash method didn’t require anyone to log into their account. Instead, it relied on cryptography and private keys. This is a radical idea, if you think about it. This means there’s no financial institution between your money and your friend’s money. There’s only the blockchain which ensures that the transactions are secure and legitimate. And because this blockchain is open and viewable by anyone, it makes it unlike any banking experience you’ve ever had. It’s an exciting new world and I think it’s the future of money. If you’re new to digital currencies, the long string of alphanumerics can look confusing. That’s your wallet address. The wallet address shown above is not my own wallet address. It belongs to the in existence. That wallet contains 257,500 DASH ($16,440,121 USD). Isn’t it weird that you can see this information? This alone should send you deep into the digital cash rabbit hole….. richest Dash wallet Disclaimer: I am invested in Dash, starting from a week ago. I consider myself to be a Dash noob who is learning a lot every day. The Dash community’s welcoming attitude and acceptance of newbies is why I am really excited about it. I might add also that if you go into Dash Slack and expect to get tips, you’re on the wrong track. Expect nothing. Give as much as you can. Technology is only as good as the people who are building it and using it. In the end, it is people, not bots that count the most in building a community worth living in.

I Just Told A Robot To Send a $60 Tip To My Electronic Wallet

It will come as no surprise to those of you reading this (thanks!), that the interest and applications of ‘ ’ is growing rapidly. Amazon Alexa and there is talk around for the next 10,000. I won’t be diving into specifics and discussing issues like . That is not what this post is about. Voice-Assistants recently hit 10,000 skills what will drive adoption retention There are lots of resources & tools, tons of cool products, frameworks, articles and people out there to help you learn about the landscape. 💫 Here are some that I find particularly useful 💫 This post is also on GitHub and open for suggestions, just submit a pull request by VoiceLabs The 2017 Voice Report 🤔 How To Use This : There is very little on the front focusing on Voice-Assistants. does the best one IMO. 📰 News newsletter Matt Hartman ( I’m thinking of starting one too —if you’re interested, sign up below!) : Always interesting to see the companies operating in these spaces. They are broken down into different categories so you can easily jump into ‘Building’, ‘Products’, ‘Analytics’ etc. If you think there are some that need adding, 🍜 Startups tell me here . This is just to outline some companies/funds that are very focused in the space right now. Again, if I’ve missed some worthwhile, 🤑 Funding: tell me here . These are some of the awesome people I follow and have come across. I’ve linked them all, you should check them out. If I’ve missed some worthwhile, you know to 👥 People & Posts: tell me here . Enjoy 😊! 🚀 I’ve launched something: Skills.wtf — A site to find the best Alexa Skills 🚀Also, I’ve added a little note about at the end of this post. A community helping facilitate connections to; an experiment I’m working on - Get a skill made/make skills for people/companies- Find investors active in the field- Intros to other active enthusiasts- Bounce ideas around with others- Advice & mentorship from experienced individuals- Resources and tools to help you build- Discover interesting products and companies 📰 News 🗞 Newsletters _Hearing Voices - This week's news about voice computing apps, delivered directly to your inbox. ..._www.getrevue.co Hearing Voices - Revue The Official Amazon Alexa Developer Newsletter _You have total control over when you want Google Home to respond to your voice commands. Its light states tell you the…_madeby.google.com Made by Google (General Google news + Google Home. Subscribe at bottom of page) 🖥 Websites/Sources _Read writing about Alexa. Every day, thousands of voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium about Alexa…_medium.com Alexa - Medium _Read writing about Voice Assistant. Every day, thousands of voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium…_medium.com Voice Assistant - Medium _Read writing about Amazon Echo. Every day, thousands of voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium about…_medium.com Amazon Echo - Medium _Read writing about Google Home. Every day, thousands of voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium about…_medium.com Google Home - Medium _Read writing about Siri. Every day, thousands of voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium about Siri._medium.com Siri - Medium _Read writing about Voice. Every day, thousands of voices read, write, and share important stories on Medium about Voice…_medium.com Voice - Medium venturebeat.com VoiceAssistants_on_VentureBeat _The brain behind Amazon's voice powered devices like Echo, FireTV etc._www.reddit.com Amazon Alexa * /r/alexa _r/AmazonEcho is a community centered around the Amazon Echo, or as we like to call her - Alexa. Alexa is designed…_www.reddit.com Amazon Echo | A voice command system that brings the Internet Of Things to your home * /r… _Everything Google Home: tips, bugs, new features, requests, etc._www.reddit.com Everything Google Home * /r/googlehome _WIRED is where tomorrow is realized_www.wired.com VoiceAssistant _Crunch Network Even before smartwatches, I did not wear a watch. I did not buy an Apple Watch or Pebble, despite the…_techcrunch.com Alexa | TechCrunch _Google Home is Google's answer to Amazon line's of voice-powered Echo devices. After announcing Home at its I/O…_techcrunch.com google home | TechCrunch _Learn about Voice applications, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant innovation. A hands-free world is coming, join in!_voicelabs.co Blog _multiplex-past, present, future technology research + insights ☂️_readmultiplex.com @ReadMultiplex _Read the latest Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant news, talking about the newest developments in the Voice-First…_voicelabs.co Press Coverage - Voice-First Industry 📜 General news in space (not Voice specific) _Bringing you the latest in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Neurotechnology_inside.com Technically Sentient _Everything about chatbots. From the makers of BotList_botpublication.com BotPublication _Connecting Technology to the Masses_gomainstrm.com GoMainstrm _Chatbots, AI, NLP, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, and more._chatbotsmagazine.com Chatbots Magazine _Edit description_tinyletter.com Locutius - Letters on Conversational Interfaces by Abi Jones _The O'Reilly Bots Podcast covers advances in conversational user interfaces, artificial intelligence, and messaging…_www.oreilly.com O'Reilly Bots Podcast ideas and resources. — curated by the team Messaging Weekly Smooch — Curated by and the team Chatbots Weekly Omar Pera Reply.ai 🍜 Startups 🗣 Platforms _Actions on Google lets developers build experiences for the Google Assistant._developers.google.com Actions on Google | Actions on Google | Google Developers _Find companies with expertise in designing, developing and optimizing Alexa skills, from agencies and development to…_developer.amazon.com Find Experienced Skill Builders and Tools _I'm open-source, which means you can grab my smarts and put it in a device of your own design. Voice enable your fridge…_mycroft.ai Home - Mycroft _Cortana is your personal assistant, always ready to help you in every situation. See what the world's most personal…_www.microsoft.com Cortana - Meet your personal assistant - Microsoft - Global _Siri on Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod touch lets you use your voice to send messages, make calls, set reminders and more._www.apple.com iOS - Siri - Apple (UK) _Viv is an artificial intelligence platform that enables developers to create an intelligent, conversational interface…_viv.ai Viv 👔 Companies Capito Systems Cognitive Code — Silvia Mindmeld Nuance Verbio ( ) Raven Tech Acq by Baidu Mobvoi ☁️ Cloud Services Amazon Lex Amazon Polly Google Cloud Platform Microsoft Cognitive Services 🛠 Build - SDKs & Frameworks Assist Alexa Skills Kit Pullstring Conversable Bespoken Tools Api.ai for Google Assistant Api.ai for Amazon Alexa Kitt.ai Sayspring Houndify Smartly.ai Gomix IFTTT Mosaic - Extras This post by is a great place to get started: Brian Donohue _Last night betaworks and Amazon hosted the first NYC Amazon Alexa Meetup to bring Alexa owners and enthusiasts together…_medium.com Build your First Alexa Skill AlexaTutorial How to Build your First Amazon Alexa Skill (eBook) by Rocket Insights _Build your first custom skill in just 10 minutes (no programming experience required)._iot-for-all.com Alexa, What’s for Lunch? _At StdLib (“Standard Library”) we allow developers to deploy functions written in Node.js as infinitely scalable API…_hackernoon.com Build an Alexa Skill in 7 Minutes Flat with Node.js and StdLib _Simple builder for Alexa replies._www.npmjs.com alexa-message-builder 💼 Agencies Xandra Assist Rain Mobiquity Matchbox Solstice SciFutures VaynerMedia Witlingo, Inc. AKQA Razorfish Giant Spoon Iconmobile Newscycle Solutions Blink Mindshare TribalScale Volara Vectorform XAPPmedia, Inc. Unified Computer Intelligence Corporation UI Centric Opearlo VocaliD Conversant Labs Future of Voice 📈 Analytics VoiceLabs.co Opearlo Analytics Witlingo, Inc dashbot Botanalytics 🎙 Products Alexa Skills Store App on and iOS Android Unofficial Alexa Skills Store — list of commands that you can ask Google’s voice assistant OK Google Finie 🤖 Hardware Nucleus Jam Voice Ivee Jibo Whyd Kuri Lynx Hello Egg Triby IO Petnet TrackR Musaic Scout Alarm Garageio Toymail ecobee Luma ring Thalmic Labs embodied Owlet Vesper 🤑 Fundraising Alexa Fund Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars Lightspeed Ventures Launch Capital NextView Ventures — Betaworks Get Support from the Alexa Team at Betaworks’ Voicecamp _voicecamp is a program for anyone building within the ecosystem of conversational interfaces._betaworks.com voicecamp 💵 Alexa Fund (All the companies announced) Sutro invoxia Petnet Rachio mojio TrackR Musaic Scout Alarm Garageio Toymail Dragon Innovation Kitt.ai ecobee Luma ring Nucleus Defined Crowd Vesper 👥 People & Posts — General Partner . M.G. Siegler GV On Twitter _Vocal computing has a shot at being the next platform — or more — if the big guys don’t screw it up_500ish.com The Voice _“Voice will never be the interaction model,” they say, out loud, to communicate their thoughts._500ish.com Computing in Concert - partner at + runs . Matt Hartman betaworks Hearing Voices Newsletter On Twitter _The rise of services that live in Chatbots, Voice Computing, & Mixed Reality_render.betaworks.com Interfaces On Demand — people-first investor . Sarah Guo Greylock Partners On Twitter _Part 3 in a series on the Conversational Economy_news.greylock.com The Conversational Economy — Voice and the New Era of Multi-Modal Computing — Reporter at TechCrunch. Sarah Perez On Twitter _The next mainstream computing platform may not be bots, AR, or VR, but rather voice-based computing. According to a new…_techcrunch.com 24.5M voice-first devices expected to ship this year, but apps struggle to retain users — vp at . Patrick Montague betaworks On Twitter _Following the success of 2016’s botcamp, betaworks is pleased to announce camps as an ongoing product line. Each year…_render.betaworks.com Announcing Voicecamp — Freelance writer + developer. Owen Williams On Twitter _For decades the technology industry has been chasing the holy grail of computing: natural language conversation. Humans…_medium.com Google Home changed the way I think about voice assistants — CEO Assist. Shane Mac On Twitter _We are excited to announce that the Assist platform is powering one of the first brands on Google Home, Lonely Planet._medium.com Talk to Lonely Planet on Google Home — Senior Product Manager, Intercom. Hugh Durkin On Twitter _When consumer internet arrived in the 1990s, it ushered in a new age of communication. Free internet chat applications…_blog.intercom.com Why voice will be the dominant chatbot interface - Inside Intercom — Partner, . Aaron Batalion Lightspeed On Twitter _When I was a kid, my computer had a SoundBlaster card. If you were a geek like me, you remember editing your autoexec…_medium.com Skate to where the voice is going… — UX / product design . Johna Paolino General Assembly On Twitter _Two Simple User Experience Design Gestures that Delighted a Female User_medium.com Google Home vs Alexa — Trying to build a better company, every day and . Adam Marchick @VoiceLabsCo Kahuna — Co-Founder / EIR @ The Chernin Group. Alexandre Linares @VoiceLabsCo On Twitter _The Voice Report starts with the underlying hardware devices and works its way up the voice-first stack_read.acloud.guru The 2017 Voice Report — CEO and CoFounder, PullString. Prev, Pixar. Oren Jacob On Twitter — Founder + Editor at . Brian Roemmele Multiplex On Twitter _During the early computer era of the 1960s, it was thought there would only be the need for a few dozen computers. By…_techpinions.com There is A Revolution Ahead and It Has A Voice _“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans”–Apple…_medium.com Apple’s Secret AI Technology: Meet Vocal IQ the self learning technology that is a part of Siri2. — Invented the hashtag; X Uber; Xoogler. Chris Messina On Twitter — Director of User Experience . Author of the O’Reilly book Designing Voice User Interfaces. Cathy Pearl @Sense_ly On Twitter _Edit description_www.amazon.com Designing Voice User Interfaces: Principles of Conversational Experiences — Strategically-oriented product design leader . Trip ODell @Amazon On Twitter _Several times a week, my children host an evening dance party in the living room. The playlist features all the modern…_medium.com Velveteen Rabbits: What a Children’s Story Can Teach Us About Computers that Talk. — Co-founder & Partner at NextView Ventures. David Beisel On Twitter _In the three months since I penned my initial blog post on "Ubiquity of Voice and the Venture Opportunity," I've been…_genuinevc.co Charting the Personal Voice Computing Startup Roadmap - GenuineVC Nithya Thadani — CEO of Rain _Last October, New York-based digital agency Rain worked with Campbell's to find a new way to push out the CPG giant's…_www.adweek.com How This Agency Built Its Own App Using Amazon Echo —I’m an Innovation-Obsessed Founder at Mylestone. Dave Balter On Twitter _Why Voice Assistants may be the answer you’ve been looking for._medium.com “Alexa, How Can I Get Unfair Ecosystem Advantage” — Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Jeremy Liew On Twitter _Games have been a killer app for just about every new platform, from PCs to TVs (via game consoles) to Facebook to…_medium.com Games for Alexa — Co-Founder/CEO Siri & Viv Labs. Dag Kittlaus On Twitter _Why Viv is Joining Forces with Samsung_elevate.samsungnext.com The Path to Intelligence Everywhere — Co-founder of . Jan König HashtagNow On Twitter _Thoughts on Designing Seamless Voice Experiences_medium.com Alexa, Please Send This To My Screen 🚀 - A community helping facilitate connections to; I am working on an experiment - Get a skill made/make skills for people/companies- Find investors active in the field- Intros to other active enthusiasts- Bounce ideas around with others- Advice & mentorship from experienced individuals- Resources and tools to help you build- Discover interesting products and companies 👍 Please tap “♥︎” if you found this useful to help others see it too 👾 This post is also on GitHub and open for suggestions, just submit a pull request 👉 Feel free to follow and reach out on Twitter 🙏 Thanks to everyone who looked at this draft very early on! And perhaps I’ll see you all in the newsletter or 😉 Build Voices Side Note: I have ‘borrowed’ this template from which is an awesome post & newsletter I use to learn about Machine Learning. Thanks The Non-Technical Guide to Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Sam DeBrule 🙌

Ultimate Guide to Voice Assistants

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Arte Merritt, Co-Founder & CEO at will be presenting at the in San Francisco, 26–27 January and will explain how analytics in chatbots will differ from traditional web and mobile analytics, as well as how to use analytics to increase engagement, acquisition, and monetisation. Additionally, Arte will share the insights and learnings from the data Dashbot.io is capturing. Dashbot.io Virtual Assistant Summit I caught up with Arte ahead of the summit to discover what has driven his work with virtual assistants, what he thinks are the main factors enabling recent advancements, as well as his predictions for conversational agents in the next 5 years. What do you feel are the leading factors enabling recent advancements and uptake of virtual assistants? Conversational UI/UX is the future of human computer interaction. The Amazon Alexa is a great example of this. My co-founder often tells this story of how we used to see the videos of two year olds swiping on iPhones and iPads, now with his two young kids they’re talking to Alexa — “Alexa play the happy song… Alexa play Star Wars…” Jesse All the major players are opening up their platforms — Facebook opened up messenger, Apple opened iMessage, Microsoft opened Skype, Amazon opened Alexa, and Google is building an Alexa competitor. The brands are right there along side them building bots on these platforms. The users are already there as well — Facebook has nearly 1 billion users on Messenger. What do you feel is essential to future progress? Discovery. In the case of Facebook in particular, it’s hard to find bots or know what already exists. Anecdotally, I have a demo bot on both Facebook and Kik. In the case of Facebook, it only had ~30 users after nearly two months, whereas on Kik, it had nearly 15,000 users after two weeks — Kik has a bot store, Facebook doesn’t. In the cases where NLP is used, that needs to improve over time as well — or how bots handle the “I don’t know” responses. Paths to monetization are important as well. In the case of conversational chatbots, being able to complete a transaction entirely through the bot is important. What developments can we expect to see in virtual assistants in the next 5 years? With conversational interfaces, in the short term, we should see the major platforms launching bot stores, if they don’t already have one, adding monetization capabilities, and providing multi-user bot interactions, if they don’t already. The multi-user bot interaction is particularly useful — if you’re communicating with friends or co-workers in a messenger platform, it’s a lot more useful if you can pull the bot into the conversation, rather than have to bounce out. Imagine searching for a restaurant — instead of bouncing out to Yelp, you can bring Yelp into the conversation. The AI / NLP will get better overtime as well — making the conversations more natural, with better response rates and understanding of the actual intent. We’ll most likely see more interoperating amongst bots as well — having bots interact with other bots. What is your main goal at Dashbot.io? Dashbot.io is a bot analytics platform that enables enterprises and developers to increase user engagement, acquisition, and monetisation. In addition to standard metrics like engagement and retention, we have bot specific metrics like conversational analytics, sentiment analysis, and the full chat session transcripts. We also provide tools to take action on the data — like our live person take over of sessions to help lead a user to conversion and increase engagement. What has driven you to work on virtual assistants? We’re super excited about this space as the conversational data is much richer and more actionable than traditional web and mobile analytics. We can do some pretty interesting things based on the data — like insert a live person into a chat sessions to improve engagement and lead to conversion, re-engagement notifications, AI testing, and more. To hear from Arte and other experts in the field of virtual assistants, register now . Places are limited! Confirmed speakers include: Alonso Martinez, Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios Lionel Cordesses, Innovation Project Manager at Renault (Elena) Corina Grigore, PhD Candidate at Yale University, Social Robotics Lab Amir Shevat, Director of Develop Relations at Slack Rick Collins, President of Enterprise at Next IT Dennis Mortensen, CEO & Founder at x.ai Anjuli Kannan, Software Engineer at Google The Virtual Assistant Summit will be running alongside the Deep Learning Summit , meaning attendees can enjoy additional sessions and networking opportunities. The European edition of the Virtual Assistant Summit will be taking place in London on 21–22 September! View the event here .

Got Data? Build a Better Bot with Analytics

hosted a night last night at in San Francisco. We bot demo WSGR It was great opportunity to see what people are doing with bots, across different platforms. The night featured bots for travel, food discovery, team building, entertainment, and even ones for finding a date or finding a contractor… not the same bot! :) Dashbot Our co-founder, Dennis, kicked off the night with an overview of ’s analytics platform. Dashbot If you’re building a bot, check it out — . It’s a great way to learn more about your bot and increase user engagement and retention. We recently added additional metrics around retention and messaging statistics. We also launched live person injection which enables you to insert messages into the session stream as if you’re the bot. We continually add new features, so feel free to provide feedback and suggestions. www.dashbot.io Demos The bot demo line up included: Alterra.ai Denis from Alterra demo’d how a user can discover new places to travel to as well as book hotels, all through natural conversation. “I’d like a warmer place, please…” Blackjack / ChatbotCity Rhett, recently developed a blackjack game inside Messenger. It’s built on top of his platform, ChatbotCity. Games are an interesting area with bots. It will be interesting to see what developers and publishers come up with in terms of conversational games. Much like with mobile apps, how developers made use of gestures and even the microphone to make interesting games, there are probably some cool ideas that can be done in conversation. We could all keep playing too. Zork Bubby Stephanie from Bubby demo’d their Matchmaking SMS bot. Dating and relationships seem like interesting areas for bots. Chris Messina Bot Ethan, Esther, and Chris demoed the Messina bot — a bot that enables people to schedule appointments with Chris, ask for Product Hunt help, and get additional news from Chris. This is an interesting area for bots — personal bots to offload some common requests and tasks. We’ve seen others with own bot as well as the bot — there’s even a bot. Esther’s Sarah cat Foxsy Yoyo demo’d the Foxsy bot — a tinder like dating bot. Growbot Justin demo’d growbot — a team feedback bot. Not only is it a way to provide quick praise for a teammate, but you can start to learn more about the company’s culture through the bot usage. Interestingly they originally had functionality for not so positive feedback, but as Justin described, the workplace isn’t quite ready for that… Jessie Humani / PullString Scott from Pullstring demoed Jessie Humani — this is a great example of an entertainment bot. Users can interact with Jessie, a young lady with a lot decisions to make. Having tried it, one of the nice things is the interaction keeps flowing along fairly seamlessly even when your responses might not completely match the conversation. You don’t get the “I don’t know” type responses from Jessie. Pullstring is also the creator of the Call of Duty bot which had over 6M messages in 24 hours. Tara.ai Syed demo’d Tara.ai’s bot for outsourcing projects, like having a mobile app built. The bot asks for the details of the project in a conversational manner and then either provides a quote for the project, if the AI recognizes the specs match similar past projects, or directs you to a project manager to complete the process. Tasteful Ravi demo’d Tasteful, a multi-platform bot for finding local restaurants. Bot Directory Our site lists many of the Facebook and Slack bots available and we have a Facebook Bot directory which enables you to discover, search for, and rate Messenger bots — it’s available at http://m.me/dashbot.io Until next time… The “Bot Space” has a vibrant community growing around it. We had a full house of attendees, many who stayed well past the official end to continue talking about bots. Stay tuned for our next event!

Bot Demo Night

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