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Basic CUI Design Principles

Very important for coursework

  • Prompt design
  • Context tracking
  • Personalisation
  • Error Handling
  • Confirmation
  • Discoverability

Conversational Design​

  • One shot interaction vs. multiple turns
  • Smart speakers are one shot - requires a wake word to explicitly invoke the interaction
  • Conversational - Use of prompt design, mean the developers design of the system response.
  • These are called conversational markers
  • Good prompt design makes use of conversational markers (and other things)

Dont expect chatbot (cw) to be like this

Conversational Design​

  • Provide clear, actionable promopts
  • Be concise, speech is ephemeral
  • Help the user understand what they can do
  • Help the user recover from errors

CUI Design Process and Tools​

Expected to use in CW Support process from early concept to fully working prototype

Sample Dialog between CUI and user

  • Avoids writing prompts in isolation, which can lead to stited user experience
  • Pick 5 most common use cases (3 for cw) for your CUI
    • Start with "blue sky" best path dialogs
    • Also write for when things go wrong, focus on recovery
  • Can be useful to illustrate early concept to stakeholders
  • Can be enacted in a table read with another person, good way to improve your wording
  • Good CUIs use clear language; it can take time to get this right!

Use visual mockups, flow diagrams

Confirmations​

  • Getting the user to confirm an action
  • Over-confirmation can be a problem
  • Considerations for choosing a confirmation strategy ...

Types​

  • Explicitly confirmation - Requires the user to take another turn to explicitly confirm
  • Implicit confirmation - Does not require the user to say anything else

Methods​

  • Three-tiered confidence
  • Implicit confirmation
  • Nonspeech confirmation
  • Generic confirmation
  • Visual Confirmation
  • .....

Error Handling​

  • Reprompt is the traditional response if user was not heard or understood.
  • Silence can work in much the same way as a repromt
    • Silence in human conversations in sign of trouble

Kind of errors​

  • No speech detected
  • Speech detected, but nothing recognized
  • Something was recognized incorrectly
  • Something was recognized but the system does the wrong thing with it
  • No speech detected
  • Speech detected, nothing recognized. Call it out explicitly to repeat question
  • Something was recognized incorrectly
  • Heard correctly, but does the wrong thing with it