These are the slides from Ben Brown's talk at Refresh Austin about the past, present and future of chat bots, workplace automation, and designing for messaging apps. View a video of this talk here: https://vimeo.com/133520585 Ben has written many essays on this subject that can be found here: medium.com/why-not/ For more about Ben and his company XOXCO, go here: xoxco.com/

1. @XOXCO
Ben Brown
Your Friendly Robot Companions
July 14, 2015

2. @XOXCO
WHY BOTS?

3. @XOXCO
Magruder High School
Computer Club,‘95

4. @XOXCO
Bot History

5. @XOXCO
1950s

6. @XOXCO
1960s

7. @XOXCO
IRC + MUDs + MOOs
1990s

8. @XOXCO
2000s

9. @XOXCO

10. @XOXCO
Googly Minotaur

11. @XOXCO
Active Buddy’s bots were…
WILDLY POPULAR

12. @XOXCO

13. @XOXCO

14. @XOXCO

15. @XOXCO

16. @XOXCO

17. @XOXCO
Meanwhile…

18. @XOXCO
Web 2.0

19. @XOXCO
Smart Phones

20. @XOXCO
The Cloud

21. @XOXCO
App Stores

22. @XOXCO
Automation

23. @XOXCO
The Opportunity

24. @XOXCO
Chinese Mobile App UI Trends
by Dan Grover
http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/
chinese-mobile-app-ui-trends.html

25. @XOXCO
“Many institutions that
otherwise have native apps or
mobile sites have opted instead
for official accounts.”

26. @XOXCO

27. @XOXCO

28. @XOXCO

29. @XOXCO
Major Successes in Messaging
• 800 million active users
• Acquired by Facebook for ~$22 billion in 2014
• 500+ million active users
• 69% of revenue from mobile ad sales
• Valued at $30 billion as standalone business
• 200+ million active users
• $15 billion market valuation

30. @XOXCO
Services Emerging via SMS
• Order almost anything through text message
• Delivery on-demand with no payment friction
• Get personal assistance via text messaging
• Monthly fee for two human assistants
• Human-assisted AI concierge service
• Available in NY and SF only

31. @XOXCO
15,000,000 Kik users have had conversations with bots.
350,000,000 messages exchanged.

32. @XOXCO
How to Make a Bot

33. @XOXCO
Bots are applications that perform automated tasks.
They present a “conversational UI” using primarily text.

34. @XOXCO
Things Bots Do
• Run scripts
• Use APIs
• Ask questions and collect answers

35. @XOXCO

36. @XOXCO
Super Simple:
External program sends messages to chat room

37. @XOXCO
var slack = new Slack(process.env.SLACK_HOOK);
slack.send({
text:‘HELLO WORLD!’,
channel: '#dev',
username: 'BenBot'
});

38. @XOXCO

39. @XOXCO

40. @XOXCO
Call and Response:
Send commands to a bot, receive answers

41. @XOXCO
var slack = new Slack(process.env.SLACK_HOOK);
app.post('/webhook',function(req,res) {
// the user's message is in req.body.text
if (req.body.text=='hello') {
slack.send({
text: 'Hello back!',
channel: req.body.channel,
username: 'BenBot'
});
}
})

42. @XOXCO

43. @XOXCO
Conversational:
Have an ongoing dialog with the bot

44. @XOXCO
var slackbot = require('node-slackbot');
var bot = new slackbot('MY_SLACK_TOKEN');
bot.use(function(message, cb) {
console.log(message);
if ('message' == message.type) {
console.log(message.user + ' said: ' + message.text);
if (message.text=='hello') {
bot.sendMessage(message.channel,'Hello yourself');
}
}
cb();
});
bot.connect();

45. @XOXCO

46. @XOXCO

47. @XOXCO

48. @XOXCO
A different type of software
• It’s used as a group, in a group setting
• It talks like a person…
• But can do things a person can’t!
• It’s all text!

49. @XOXCO
To create a good bot:
• Learn and document the process
• Plan for lots of contingencies
• Build with personality
• Be polite

50. @XOXCO
“Be As Smart As A Puppy”
http://berglondon.com/blog/2010/09/04/b-a-s-a-a-p/

51. @XOXCO
WHY BOTS?

52. @XOXCO
What does it mean when
your entire application is
TEXT?

53. @XOXCO
TEXT
• Human’s learn to deal with text very young and use it
constantly and effortlessly
• Text is very easy to store, transfer, transform and
translate

54. @XOXCO
MESSAGING
• Messages are pushed all the way to the user
• Some kind of messaging is built into every single
phone on the planet
• Users are already in the messaging app - your bot is
one click away from mom, BFF or boss

55. @XOXCO
Interesting Questions!
• How to construct, store, execute conversational UI
• What is the baseline expectation for bot behavior? 3
laws type stuff?
• How can bots be made discoverable? How do you
know what they can do?
• Does this mean we can finally cancel Creative Cloud?

56. @XOXCO
Messaging Experience Design
#mxd

57. @XOXCO
The Bigger Picture

58. @XOXCO
VOICE

59. @XOXCO
AI

60. @XOXCO
ROBOTICS

61. @XOXCO

62. @XOXCO
dev4slack.xoxco.com

63. @XOXCO
@benbrown
@xoxco
http://xoxco.com/
http://medium.com/why-not/
THANKS!