UX Scotland 2016 - Designing voice and natural language experiences

Copyright 2016 © Sabio All Rights Reserved
Designing voice and natural language experiences
Dan Whaley
UX Scotland 2016

Copyright 2016 © Sabio All rights reserved
Why now?
User
Acceptance
Core Speech
Recognition/NLU
Data – fast mobile
connections
Exposure – Siri, Google
Now, Cortana
Conversational
Interfaces

User Expectation
Expectation for low effort, intelligent experiences…
Conversation is our most natural communication medium
Well design conversational and speech UIs are the next
generation of low effort interface
Intuitive
•User doesn’t
need to
learn how to
interact
Unobtrusive
•Technology
or interface
doesn’t get
in the way
Personalised
•Tailor
interaction
to the
specific user
Anticipatory
•Predicts
users next
action or
intent
Cross
Channel
•Switch
between
channels
and time

Platform Explosion
Nina Web/Mobile

Design Principles
Start with the user
Design with data
Get out of the way
Do the hard work to make it simple
Design for all
Understand context
Design for the interface
Deliver solutions, not technology
Be consistent, not uniform
Reuse and refine
Test
Design
Analyse

Start with the user… design with data

Conversation as interface
Natural
Language
Temporal
Linear
Repetetive
RedundantAmbiguous
Non-
spatial
Transient
Humans are wired for
conversation
Part of evolutionary
development
Instinctively interpret both
words and dialogue acts
“The conscious knowledge that speech can have a non human origin
is not enough to overcome the historically appropriate activation of
social relationships by voice.” Nass and Brave 2005

Understand context
When is voice/nlu the right interface?
• Hands free environment
• Low background noise
• Number of questions to qualify task
• Very large number of options
• Controlled domain
When is voice/nlu the wrong interface?
• Lots of graphical information
• Selecting from a large number of defined options
• Noisy environment
• Difficult to say items (email address)

Understand context

Get out of the way
Conversational UI’s can be the least intrusive
interface… truly invisible
Keep it that way

Cooperative Principle
Paul Grice
(1913-
1988)
Philosopher
of language
Conversation is built on cooperation
towards mutual understanding by
conversing parties
Participants must make every effort
to listen and respond appropriately
and at the right moment
"Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which
it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange
in which you are engaged." (Grice, Studies in the Way of
Words1989: 26).

Maxims Of Conversation
Quantity
• Provide the appropriate amount of information
Quality
• Be truthful, do not say what you know to be false
Relevancy
• Make your contribution directly relevant, advance the
conversation
Manner
• Choose words and concepts that can be understood by
all participants to ensure clarity

Dialogue Entities
Agent
• People or systems engaged in conversation
Utterance
• Whatever is spoken or written including inherent semantics
Discourse makers
• Verbal or non verbal markers used to signal or mark a
change in the conversation
Turn
• Period of time that a particular agent ‘has the floor’ or
controls the conversation

Components of Conversation
State
State
Agent Agent
Action
Action
Context
Signal
Signal
Me: “hello” (Action: initiate conversation. State: Waiting)
Friend: “hey Dan” (Action: reply, acknowledge. State: Conversing)
Me: “how are you finding the workshop?” (Action: Question, offer turn.
State: waiting response)

Prompts
Prompts are means to communicate or request
information from the user or signal change of state or turn
Providing Information
• Order status, Cab ETA, Balance, etc…
Requesting Information
• Destination, date of birth, credit card number
Confirming Information
• Check understanding. Implicit or explicit.
Offering Choices
• Transfer funds, check account balance, etc…
Signalling an Error Condition
• Re-establish dialogue, get the user back on track

Tips for good prompting…
Speak like a human
Avoid jargon or slang
Start with the most
important information
Don’t explain the
interface. Avoid “speak”
Confirm explicitly only
where necessary
Be consistent, but not
uniform
Avoid mixing recorded
and synthesised audio
Don’t focus on errors
Avoid repeating “sorry”
and “please”
Use contractions, “I’m”
Keep choices simple and
distinct

Lost in time…
Mark where you are
• Implicit confirmation, e.g., “Card Payment…”
Use verbal/non-verbal discourse markers
• Silence to signal turn taking
Indicate any likely delay or latency
• Avoid unexpected silence, “one moment while I…”
Establish islands of safety
• Ok, I’ll take you back to the menu
Allow user to escape
• “start over”
Voice is a temporal interface: its easy to get lost

When it all goes wrong…
No
Match
• When the system doesn’t
understand the user
No
Input
• When the user doesn’t
respond to a question
No to
confirm
• When the user rejects a
confirmed response
Think about what drives each type of error in a
particular context. User is confused, weary,
distracted? Background noise?

Handling error
Take the blame
Give a couple of attempts
Tier prompting
Give examples of how to respond
Islands of safety
Don’t be repetitive
Switch modality

Persona
Function
Congruence
Persona
Coherence
Persona defines the overall
communication style
Diction (familiar vs formal)
Verbosity (concise vs wordy
Tone of voice (warm vs austere)
Characteristics (friendly, aloof,
warm, etc…)
Coherent matching of application function with
coherent persona creates congruent experience

Dom

Jess

How Speech Works
• Phonetics
• /k/a//n//s/el/
• “cancel”
• “can sell”
Acoustic
Model
• “cancel my
account” {.8}
• “can sell my
account” {.2}
Linguistic
Model • NLU: Extract
meaning
• Action: ‘Cancel’
• Entity: ‘Account’
Semantic
Model
I want to
cancel
my
account
Text only starts here

Architecture
Application
Data
Model
Controller
View
Prompts
Recog/
NLU
Action:
Entity
- Users response mapped
to action/entity model
- Dialogue crafted around
these
“Book a ticket to see
Batman tomorrow about
eight”
Book: CinemaTicket
(Film: Batman,
Date: Tomorrow,
Time: 20:00)
Next
view

Training
Setup: Map example ‘utterances’ to semantic model
“Book a cinema ticket” -> Book:CinemaTicket
“make a reservation to see a film” -> Book:CinemaTicket
“get me a ticket to batman” -> Book:CinemaTicket
Craft dialogue based onOptimisation: Review and update regularly
“Need a pass to see batman” -> ??
“I wanna see a movie” -> ??

Data Sources
Contact
Centre
Listen to calls –
speech
analytics
Web
Chat
Web
transcripts –
text analytics
Mobile
or Web
Forum pages –
site analytics

Artificial Intelligence
iStock

AI - Turing Test

AI Today
Self-drivingCars
NaturalLanguageProcessing
Playing‘Go’
Specific Intelligence General Intelligence

AI Journey
Designed
Intelligence
Human
Assisted
Intelligence
Full Machine
Intelligence

Future - AI Driven Customer Service
ArtificialIntelligence

Future drivers
Connected devices: no screen
• Wearables
• Smart homes
More data: personalisation/anticipation
• Biometrics
• Location
• Consumer preference
Health: cost of care
• Elder care
• Non-physician care

dwhaley@sabio.co.uk
@whaley_d
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dwhaley-speech-ux
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UX Scotland 2016 - Designing voice and natural language experiences

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