Slides from Ben Brown's talk at O'Reilly Design 2016

1. BOTS

2. howdy.
@benbrown

3. howdy.
howdy.ai

4. howdy.
Botkit

6. "Conversational interfaces"
are the new hotness in
digital product design.
JOHN PAVLUS / Co.Design

7. Bots are here, they’re
learning — and in 2016,
they might eat the web
CASEY NEWTON / The Verge

15. 1960

16. Joseph
Weizenbaum

17. ELIZA

18. 1970

19. Kenneth Mark
Colby, MD

20. PARRY

21. ICCC

22. howdy.
International Conference on
Computer Communications

23. THE
VINT
CERF
THE
BOB
KAHN Unknown

25. howdy.
IRC BOTS

26. howdy.
MUDs + MOOs

29. Googly Minotaur

30. Active Buddy’s bots were…
WILDLY POPULAR

31. howdy.

32. howdy.
Twitter Bots

33. howdy.
DARIUS
KAZEMI

34. howdy.
Chinese Mobile
App UI Trends
Dan Grover wrote…

35. Many institutions that otherwise have
native apps or mobile sites have
opted instead for official accounts.
~Dan Grover

36. howdy.

37. $50M

45. WORDS

46. • No logos
• No buttons
• No global navigation
• No fonts
• No forms
• No colors
• No layout
• No reload or back button
• No way to close the tab
• No spinning “busy” indicator
Serious Design
Constraints

47. Meekan 3 ways
Get it: meekan.com

48. howdy.
Design by copy writers

49. howdy.
Design by coders

50. howdy.
Design by business analysts

51. howdy.
Interesting Challenges

52. Discoverability
How does a user know what your app can do?

53. Natural Language
How can your app best understand free form input?

54. Send
🤖 Which sort do you want to
pick up?
The `MAGIC SWORD` or
the `SHORT SWORD`?
Disambiguation
Pickup sword
Short

55. Verbosity vs Terseness
How much or how little should your app say?

56. Personality
How much, where and when is personality appropriate?

58. Input Validation
How do you provide feedback one line at a time?

59. howdy.
What is your birthday?

62. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
1/25/1978
🤖 Got it: January 25, 1978.
Wow, you are getting old.
Simple, right?

63. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
Jan 25
🤖 😱
Oops!
Bad Input

64. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY)
Guide User
With Hints

65. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY)
But people
make mistakes
Jan 25
🤖 😱

66. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY)
Catch Invalid
Response
Jan 25
🤖 Please enter a valid value.

67. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY) Friendly, helpful
response to bad
input
Jan 25
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.

68. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY)
When your app
talk like a
person…
Jan 25
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!

69. Send
Jan 25
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.

70. Send
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Oh crap what have I done now.

71. Send
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Oh crap what have I done now.

72. Send
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
I HATE YOU!!!!
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Oh crap what have I done now.
People have a
lower tolerance
for not being
understood

73. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY)
Variation
In Script
Jan 25
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!

74. Send
🤖 What is your birthday?
(MM/DD/YYYY)
Variation
In Script
Jan 25
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!
🤖 Whoops, I still didn’t see a
date.

75. Send
Jan 25
🤖 Alas, my robot ears did not
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!
🤖 Whoops, I still didn’t see a
date. Please tell me your
birthday.
No!

76. Send
hear a properly formatted date.
Please specify your date in the
format DD/MM/YYY.
Ugh!
🤖 Whoops, I still didn’t see a
date. Please tell me your
birthday.
No!
🤖 Still not a date. Are you
having problems? You can
say `help` or `quit` at any time.

77. Send
Ugh!
🤖 Whoops, I still didn’t see a
date. Please tell me your
birthday.
No!
🤖 Still not a date. Are you
having problems? You can
say `help` or `quit` at any time.
🤖 Looks like you are too busy to
respond. We can pick this up
later.
Timeout

78. Initial Prompt
Correct Response
Incorrect Response
Quit
Timeout
Help

79. Send
🤖 Do you want to eat?
1. Tacos
2. Pizza
3. Burgers
Multiple Choice
Menu

80. Send
🤖 Do you want to eat
tacos, pizza, or burgers?
Multiple Choice
Menu

81. Send
🤖 Hey what’s up?
What can I do for you?
Avoid!!
• Rhetorical Questions
• Open Ended Questions
• Multiple Questions in one
message

82. howdy.
Design with personality

83. howdy.
Design for lots of
contingencies

84. howdy.
Design a way out

85. howdy.
Design for variation

86. The Jack Principles
• Maintain pace
• Create the illusion of awareness
• Maintain the illusion of awareness

87. Grice’s Maxims
• Maxim of Quantity
• Maxim of Quality
• Maxim of Relevance
• Maxim of Manner

88. TOOLS

89. Botkit
Hubot
AIML
SuperScript

92. Wit.ai
Converse.ai
IBM Watson
API.ai

93. BESTPRACTICES

94. howdy.
VOICE

95. howdy.
AI

96. howdy.
ROBOTICS

97. howdy.

98. We’re in the wild west.

99. WE CAN
BUILD IT

100. howdy.
dev4slack.xoxco.com

101. howdy.
@benbrown