Alexa, make a VUI (voice ui)

Design

Ways to prototype

1. Role-play
2. Scripts
3. SaySpring -> free but request an invite
4. HighFidelity

Design principles

• Keep it short
• Voice is a great input but less nice for output (alexa talking to you)
• have a low amount of things you can do
• Cognitive load People can't remember things for very long, keep them very short.
  • Banking app knowing and doing math with the credit card account and how much is left.

Utterances: What people actually say

Intent: What you're actually trying to say

Principles of conversation

• Sound Natural

  • Talking out loud helps a lot

• Keep it short

• Watch for cognitive load

• think about Affordances

• Take turns

  • Don't ask a question then keep talking!

• Use confirmation phrases

  • Explicit
    • Good for things that are high risk or likely to go wrong like names
    • 500$ are you sure you want to do this?
  • Implicit Feedback *

• Give people credit

  • Don't force people to say things one way
  • Prime them but don't tell them what to say

• Vary your responses

  • Great, alright, sweet.

• Engage beginners and experts

  • Don't tell them tons of stuff after they've heard it a lot

• Conversation Repair

  • No input
    • Say it again
    • better give more helpful re-prompts. *
  • Bad to undersand
  • Expect variations
  • prepared to step in and help anytime
    • Make it contextual
  • Fail Gracefull
    • "Let's talk again later, here's how to get back"

• Use SSML

  • Change the way you say, whispered, pronounce it in very particular ways
  • <audio ..../> to have 3rd party audio
  • Change the say you pronounce it
  • etc...

• more on the website

• Wake word -> "Alexa"

• Pizza Plannet -> app name

• Intents: Order me a pizza -> OrderPizzaIntent

  • I need my pizza
  • I need a pizza
  • I be got pizza
  • My regular

• Slot (alexa) / Entitiy (google)

  • {size} -> list of stuff that are in that category
    • Large/Big -> large

• Responses

Types of skills

• Flash Briefing
  • rss feed of information
• Custom
  • What we're making
• Video
  • Like for TV

AWS Lambda ARN

• Lambda functions are the way to go usually

const Alexa = require('alexa-sdk');

const handlers = {
	'LaunchRequest': function() {
		this.emit(":ask", "Hello my friends at Open WEst!", "no really, hello");
   }
}

	

Ideas

1. Reserving a room
2. Check/Log expenses
3. Sending a coworker a message.

open-west