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JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Welcome to Assistant
on Air, where we have conversations with people that
build for Google Assistant.
I'm Jessica Dene Early-Cha, and I'll be your host today.
I'm a developer and advocate for Actions on Google,
and our co-host is Riversong which is my pup.
And today, we'll be chatting with Wally Brill.
Welcome, Wally.
WALLY BRILL: Thank you.
Thanks for having me, and thanks for having me, River.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: So Wally,
what do you do here at Google?
WALLY BRILL: So my title is head of conversation design advocacy
and education, which is a long-winded way of saying
I travel around and run workshops and talk
to people to help them make better
conversations with robots, better Actions on Google.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Ah, that's awesome.
That sounds fascinating.
So as a developer, I know I'm building actions.
So then, my robots can talk to people,
and so I would love to talk to you
about what are some great tips or what should a developer be
thinking about when they're building their first action?
WALLY BRILL: Well, primarily, they
should be thinking about conversation.
This is a conversation.
It's not command and control.
It's not barking orders in a machine.
It's a completely natural conversation.
We've been speaking, scientists now believe, for 500,000 years,
and in that time, we've learned to have
conventions of conversation.
So we know when to take a turn.
We know that a falling intonation
at the end of a sentence is probably a statement.
Look, there's a lion, that kind of thing,
and this is evolutionary.
So we all have these conventions,
and what we need to do is leverage
them to make the conversations with the robots,
so that it's natural and easy.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah, so what's
the biggest difference when it comes
to just human-to-human conversation compared
to human to a robot?
I'm sure there's some pieces that are missing,
or something things as we we're designing these conversations
we have to take into account.
WALLY BRILL: Yeah, well, there's a couple of things.
It's another great question.
No, a couple of things.
First off, because we're using our voice,
and we're talking to a robot, we don't
have any of the visual cues that we would normally have when
we're speaking with people.
When you and I speak we have micro expressions,
we have body language, we indicate to each other
how to move that conversation forward.
Right?
We don't have any of that with the robot.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: That's true.
WALLY BRILL: Right?
There's just none of that interplay.
So that's one of the things that we have to account for.
So what we need to do is we need to make
it really clear when it's the turn of the other person
to talk.
So we need to have a call to action
at the end of every statement.
So how does that work for you?
Will that work?
What can I do for you now?
Blah, blah, blah, so continually asking
how to move the conversation forward.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah, so it sounds like the words
themselves are just so much more important, when
it comes to conversation, when you're designing.
Because with our body language, you
could tell if I've stopped talking
or if I do some micro expression,
and then you'll know it's your turn, per se.
WALLY BRILL: Mm-hmm.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: OK.
That's super cool.
So what would be the first thing,
after we figure out it should be a conversation,
then what would be the next step when
building for a conversation?
WALLY BRILL: Well, what are you making?
First off, we've got to decide that there's
an actual task that's valuable and that
can be achieved with a voice-first environment
or a voice-only environment.
And so what is that task that we're trying to perform,
and could it be done more easily in another way,
or are we actually providing benefit by using the Google
Assistant to do it?
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: So what I'm hearing
is that we should necessarily have
every single type of action or interaction
that a human and computer could have be all voice,
but it should be the things that make sense to be voice.
WALLY BRILL: That's correct, and don't forget that we're now
on a billion devices with the Google Assistant
around the world, and many, many, many of those
have screens.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: Right?
It's only things like the Google Home
and the Google Home Mini where you're using voice only.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Mm-hmm.
WALLY BRILL: So otherwise, we're using screens.
We can bring up useful information on the phone.
We can bring it up on the smart display,
on the TV, all kinds of places.
So there's the opportunity for multi-modal interplay
and multi-modal design which is really quite
wonderful and quite new.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Totally.
So if I'm a developer, and I have figured out
that I have this really great voice-first interaction.
I want to order coffee.
I have this local coffee shop that I run on the side,
and I want to make an action with that.
I want to build something.
So I've found my scenario, what should I do next?
WALLY BRILL: What you should do next
is get a real understanding of the brand
that you're trying to convey.
So what's your brand?
What are the dimensions of that brand?
Is it quirky and fun?
Is it serious?
What are those things that you're
trying to express as a brand, and where do those descriptors
live?
What are they?
So we understand the brand.
Next thing we want to do is who's going to use this?
We need to understand the user.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: True.
WALLY BRILL: Because really we're designing for someone,
and we want to know what kind of environment they may be in.
What's the context that they're going to use this in?
Are they under time pressure?
They're ordering coffee.
Are they out on the street, on the way to your coffee shop?
Where are they?
What are they doing?
We want to understand as much about that as we possibly can.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: OK.
WALLY BRILL: Right?
So that's step two.
So we've got a task.
We've got a user.
The next thing we need to do is we need
to develop a brand persona.
What is the personality of your brand,
and I'll tell you why that's important.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: OK.
WALLY BRILL: So Clifford Nass and Scott Brave from Stanford
did load of research around what happens
in that first second, second and a half of hearing a voice.
And remarkably, we into it all kinds
of characteristics just from hearing someone's
voice for a second or a second and a half.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Wow.
WALLY BRILL: It's really wild.
We do it unconsciously.
We do it automatically.
There's no way to avoid it.
So in that voice, you get a sense of age.
You get a sense of education level.
You get a sense of what we call register,
which is where is that being in relation to me
in the social strata?
Is it my peers?
Is it my employee?
Is it my superior?
Where does it live?
So that's register.
And then, if there's an accent, you get a sense of geography.
Right?
But as they say on the infomercials, that's not all.
There is more.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: We also get a sense of intelligence,
trustworthiness, and likability.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Wow.
WALLY BRILL: So all of these things
come together in that first second and a half,
and you're either going to create
an enthusiastic impression and a positive impression,
or you're going to create a negative one.
And there's no such thing as no persona.
Because if you don't design it, then the listener
is going to design it for you in your own imagination.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Wow.
WALLY BRILL: Right?
So we have to design a persona.
That's the next step.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: That's amazing.
It's amazing that only a second, second and a half, two seconds,
like how quickly us as humans just
pull all that data from something
as simple as a few words.
WALLY BRILL: Yeah.
I think it's probably evolutionary again.
We have a sense of what's dangerous and what's safe.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: And what's positive and not.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Totally.
That really emphasizes the importance
of being thoughtful on how you craft the idea of persona.
Right?
So who this person is, that represents your brand.
WALLY BRILL: That's right.
That's right, and we go deep on it.
Let me just say, there's a process for it.
And so what we'll do is we'll create a series of documents,
and you may say, Wally, why are we doing all that?
Well, if you have three or four people writing
prompts for your Action on Google, right,
or even just you doing it from one point
and then coming back two weeks later to write something else.
You need to know exactly who that character is
you're writing for.
It can't vary from week to week or from prompt to prompt.
It's got to be absolutely on track to be that personality.
So we create a biography.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Cool.
WALLY BRILL: We basically invent an ideal employee
or an ideal robot or whatever, but we create a biography.
This is who this character is.
We go into things like age.
We go into things like physical characteristics.
Because if it's somebody bigger, they may have a deeper voice,
and if it's somebody who's smaller,
they may have a higher voice.
All of these factors contribute to that personality is.
Now, there's another group of people who need to know this,
and that's whoever is the voice artist that you're using,
if you're using a live voice artist.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: To record the prompts,
because they need a suit of clothes to put on.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Mm-hm.
WALLY BRILL: So they need to wear that persona.
They need to wear that biography.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: And anybody who's coaching those
prompts in the studio.
Right?
Even if you're using text to speech,
which you may very well, we still
want to make sure that it's consistent,
and the language is consistent.
So there's more stuff, but I'll take a break there and see
if you have any questions.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Oh, no, that sounds fascinating.
It almost even sounds like you're
building a back story of a character, like to go on film,
like something so then people can really
understand who that person is.
And especially when you're talking about other writers,
because I could definitely see some actions
get so large that you need multiple people writing
these dialogues.
That would be really nice just to have
as a concrete way to ground it.
So we have the biography.
WALLY BRILL: You've got a biography.
Then, what we do is we create a couple of paragraphs
of what we call a monologue.
So this may just be a conversation
that this character is having in a bar with a friend
or wherever.
And so we'll write a conversational monologue that's
in first person, and we'll get that character
to read that monologue.
So the voice actor, if we're using live voice talent,
or if we're using text to speech, we'll record it.
And we'll know very quickly if it sounds natural,
and what that does is it gives more depth to the character.
Because if you're just trying to get the sense of the character
off prompts, that's not going to give you
enough to really get into it.
So the monologue really helps, and then the third and possibly
most important thing is what we call sample dialogues.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Mm-hm.
WALLY BRILL: And you'll hear, if you
watch other videos of the series and things
like, you'll hear people talking about sample dialogues.
A sample dialogue, it's like a play between two characters.
There's a user, and there's a robot.
Right?
And the user says something, the robot responds.
The user says something, the robot responds.
We write out basically the design of the interaction
as a two-part play.
So you'll go through the most important paths
of what the action is going to be and what it's going to do.
Hi, welcome to Jessica's Coffee Shop.
I'd like to order a double latte, please.
Sure, I can help you with that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
So we write that out, we'll read it aloud
to see if it makes sense, and that's really
the core of how we design.
We design from the conversation.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: That's amazing.
WALLY BRILL: So having those artifacts really brings
the thing to life and gives you a real impression of what
you're going to be developing for.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah, definitely.
I know, when I was [INAUDIBLE] my first action,
I tried to do all the steps, but I actually
didn't do the step of reading it out loud or hearing it.
I just read it to myself, and I think I had already knew
what I wanted to sound like.
But once I actually heard it coming out from the Assistant,
I was like, oh my gosh, this sounds way more formal
than I wanted to be.
It didn't sound casual and relaxed,
and that was the persona I wanted to.
So even though I had that in mind, my actual writing,
because I didn't hear it, I didn't listen to it,
it didn't come out that way which was interesting.
WALLY BRILL: It's really interesting,
and it's not unusual.
So written language is generally more formal.
You don't generally use contractions.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Mm-hm.
WALLY BRILL: It's also more permanent.
So you can look down the page.
You can look at different areas of the conversation
while you're having it, right?
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: Spoken language is ephemeral.
It's here, and it's gone.
It's linear.
Right?
You say something, poof, it's gone.
What's next?
Right?
So it's really important that we read these things aloud.
Because otherwise, we do very often
fall into that trap of using what's written language
and trying to turn that into spoken language,
and they're different.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: That sounds really exciting.
WALLY BRILL: What was your first action?
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: My first action
was a white-boarding practice one
which actually I demonstrated on this series
on the first episode.
WALLY BRILL: Cool.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: So it was a lot of fun
to be able to build that out, but I did the mistake
where I went code first.
I saw everything.
I saw the design docs, and I was like, that's nice.
I'll do that later, because coming from a web background,
I thought you could do those two different things separately.
And I didn't realize how intertwined conversation
design and the actual building of the project is.
And so I'm definitely a firm believer, whenever
I meet people that want to build,
it's like, no, learn from me.
Don't make my mistakes.
It was not worth it, because I kept
hitting onto errors or to roadblocks
that I thought were technical issues.
WALLY BRILL: Right.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: But they weren't.
It was because I didn't have a good conversation design.
I didn't know where we were going.
I had just the happy path, but I didn't
think about like all the edge cases that could potentially
happen, or somebody who was it like me.
WALLY BRILL: Right.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: And that, I think,
was my biggest downfall.
So being able to have a conversation design
and be able to think of those things first,
before you even code, would have saved me hours of time.
WALLY BRILL: Right, and that's really it.
That's really the message that we want people to take away.
And the point you make about having a map, that's what
that conversation design is.
That's what that sample dialog is.
It's the map, and it just serves this really well.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah, that's fantastic.
So if there's somebody watching, and they're a developer,
and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm super excited.
Wally, this sounds amazing.
What should be their first thing that they should go to,
where they're looking up online or getting some tips
and tricks?
WALLY BRILL: So OK, developers, this is for you.
actions.google.com/design is our basic repository for everything
to do with conversation design.
So that's actions.google.com/design.
I'm sure it's right there.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah, we'll put it.
WALLY BRILL: Underneath, OK.
It's probably-- yeah.
That's one thing.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
WALLY BRILL: There's a book by the wonderful Dr. Cathy
Pearl called "Designing Voice User Interfaces"
which is a splendid book.
She, of course, is a Googler.
There is another book by James Giangola called "Voice User
Interface Design" which is the original guidelines around how
to create conversations for automated systems.
It's 15-20 years old now, but it's still absolutely relevant.
The other thing I would say is pick up
a copy of Cliff Nass and Scott Brave's book,
"Wired for Speech."
It's really, really interesting about all of these topics.
They really went deep on how humans and computers interact,
and they created a lot of the foundational information that
serves us really well in design now.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: That's awesome.
Well, thank you so much, Wally.
We really appreciate you spending time with us
and sharing all this knowledge.
This is great.
WALLY BRILL: Well, thank you, and thank River.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Yeah.
Thanks.
WALLY BRILL: Splendid.
You've got to show River's tail.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: Oh my goodness.
Come on, baby.
Wake up.
Oh, there she goes.
WALLY BRILL: There she goes.
JESSICA DENE EARLY-CHA: We hope that you
enjoyed today's episode.
If you have any suggestions for future episodes,
please leave a comment below.
Follow us on Twitter for updates and new episodes.
I've been Jessica.
Chat with you next time.
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