NANDINI STOCKER: Hi, I'm Nandini from Google's Conversation
Design Team, here to give you some tips on how
to design your own voice and chat
UIs using Actions on Google.
Before we dive in, let's have a conversation
about conversation.
Consider this.
All human inventions start as ideas.
By definition, conversation is the exchange
of ideas by spoken words.
And by definition, civilization is the most advanced stage
of human social development.
It's the tangible expression of our common understanding
and values, which is expressed through language.
And language is molded and refined by conversations.
A conversation is a contract between two participants
with a mutual investment in the outcome.
But all of that is really hard to codify.
Building natural human-to-computer conversations
is hard.
But that's because human-to-human conversations
are only deceptively easy.
People are not going to change how
they converse any time soon.
So the key to closing that gap between modern interfaces
and thousands of years of evolution
is to use what we know to be true about human-to-human
conversation to teach our computers to talk to humans,
and not the other way around.
So the key to building a good voice interface
is not to fall into the trap of simply converting
a GUI into a VUI.
Obviously, I can't teach you an entire design discipline
in a few minutes.
But I can give you five protips to set you up for success.
Let's design a simple number guessing game along the way.
Here we go.
Number one, leverage your brand and give yourself a persona.
I don't mean a caricature or mascot necessarily,
but you can do that too to make it even more accessible.
A persona is more than that.
It's the consistent character captured by the voice
and interactive experience.
It's the face of that experience for the user.
First, list the core attributes of your brand
and what you stand for.
Come up with the corresponding attributes
that can be conveyed through design elements and, of course,
the voice dialogue itself.
For example, if your brand is known for speed, something
we at Google are known for, some attributes of the design
might be to be intuitive and data-driven,
since both of those elements cut out steps for the user.
Some voice attributes for the actual dialogue wording
might be engaging, or apt, or approachable, since those also
tighten up the dialog by removing ambiguity or making
it easier for the user to have confidence in the interaction.
Write a short style guide covering things
like pace, tone, energy level, vocal attributes,
and the overall impression that you're shooting for.
Try to create a simple biosketch of a character that might
embody all of these attributes.
Give it a name, if you want.
Also, there's a practical reason for creating a persona as well.
It's a good grounding mechanism for you long-term.
Designers and developers will come and go,
or multiple people could work on it at once.
It'll give everyone something to fall back on for consistency.
Finally, don't forget to identify yourself
as a separate entity from the Google Assistant.
That means greet the user.
Number two, think outside the box, literally.
It's tempting to draw out a conversation path visually,
and plug in the dialog, and then dive right into the code
or start stringing together blocks of context
to write a working agent, and then back into the experience
iteratively.
We don't recommend this.
You can, but I promise you it will save time and give you
a much richer experience to map out the core conversation
paths ahead of time.
This doesn't mean just the so-called happy path.
It doesn't mean error paths either.
Instead, write out your core experiences
like you would a screenplay.
This can be as scrappy as acting it out and documenting it
on paper or create an interactive prototype
you tweak and play with until you're ready to start coding.
And then, when you draw out your initial vision,
keep it at a high level, where the boxes present
entire dialogs or user intents, but leave out
the individual wording you'll use in the interaction.
Number three.
Context.
Here are just some types of context
you can consider and infuse into a conversation
to make it more meaningful.
Where's the user?
What are they doing?
What type of device are they interacting on?
How was the experience influenced over time?
Where is the user's frame of mind in relation
to what they're trying to do?
Try to cater to their intent, not to a specific feature.
Number four.
Speech recognition technology isn't perfect,
but it's getting better all the time.
So for the most part, you might want
to treat that as a black box that will continue to improve.
You have to, of course, be aware of its limitations,
but try to step back and look at the interaction
from the user's perspective when something goes wrong.
You don't have to try to steer the user back
to the original question if they don't
get recognized immediately.
There are so many reasons they might not have been.
People hardly ever say nonsense.
Try to take those so-called errors
and make them into another meaningful turn in the dialog.
Finally, I leave you with a challenge.
This new world of conversation designed for machines
opens up a great deal of opportunity
that hasn't existed before for us to use technology
to advance our lives.
Sure, as you get started, create some games.
But I urge you to think bigger eventually.
Help give someone access to information or technology
that they couldn't use before because of a physical, mental,
or an economic disadvantage.
We're excited to help you do that with Actions on Google.
Check out the description for some resources.
And we can't wait to see what you create.
[MUSIC PLAYING]