Thoughts on Conversational Software

Starting with Doug Engelbart's Mother of all Demos in 1968, we've been on a technological tear for the last 50 years. However, the world and context of Engelbart, and the needs and opportunities for technology, were drastically different from today's. So while we continue to build out and enhance the roadmap set in the days of the Cold War, conversational software opens up and presents new ways to weave technology into our lives in ways that are both diffuse and profound, and meet the user — us humans — where we are, rather than asking us to modify ourselves to fit technology.

Transcript

1. Thoughts on Conversational Software Chris Messina Developer Experience Lead, Uber April 14, 2016 • Media Kitchen
2. • What are we doing here? • Relevant moments in computing history • The Year of Conversational Commerce • So here we are • What we are doing here This talk is pre-conversational
3. What are we doing here?
4. What are you doing here?
5. What am I doing here?
7. What was Doug Engelbart doing then?
9. SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground-Environment Computers)
10. SAMs near the BOMARC Missile Accident Site
11. Cold War
13. Lead engineer Bill English using NLS (1968)
14. The Mother of All Demos December 9, 1968
15. • Graphical “Windows” UI • Window Resizing and Layering • Hyperlinks • Hypermedia • WYSIWYG Word Processing • Contextual Help • Keyword Search • Video calling • Slideshows • Collaborative Document Editing • Version Control • Remote Procedure Calls • Dynamic File Linking • Distribute Client-Server Architecture • Shared Databases Video: SRI International; Text source: Chris Cox
16. The original mouse
17. Dave Evans in the 60s
21. Steve Jobs 1995
25. Steve Jobs 2007
36. 2008-2015
48. The Year of Conversational Commerce
49. Utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context.
50. “symphonic tipping point”
51. 3,500 Q4 '11 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 MESSAGING APPS HAVE SURPASSED SOCIAL NETWORKS Monthly active users for top 4 social networks and messaging apps Big 4 Messaging Apps Big 4 Social Networking Apps Millions BI INTELLIGENCE Source: Companies, Bi Intelligence
52. 60B vs 20B
60. “Alexa, ask Uber to request a ride.” “Alexa, ask Uber to request an UberX.” “Alexa, ask Uber where’s my ride?”
62. So here we are
64. Conversational software is early
65. Bots are not the be-all, end-all solution
66. Conversations and bots complement apps
67. • Focus less on “acquiring users” in conversational contexts, and more on enriching the relationships you’ve earned
68. • Focus less on “acquiring users” in conversational contexts, and more on enriching the relationships you’ve earned • Make it easy to share great experiences and content with your customers’ friends — create content that's screenshot-worthy!
69. • Focus less on “acquiring users” in conversational contexts, and more on enriching the relationships you’ve earned • Make it easy to share great experiences and content with your customers’ friends — create content that's screenshot-worthy! • Hand off to web or native apps when it serves the customer’s needs; but don’t drop them in the middle of nowhere: use deep linking to orient and help them complete their task
70. Do have an API strategy!
71. • “Bot” is a shorthand for an interaction paradigm that is superficially conversational but is augmented and/or facilitated by: • speed, • persistence (identity + cross-device syncing over the cloud), • trust-based operations (payments), • and API integrations
72. What we are doing here
73. “augmenting human intellect”
74. To protect the industry…
75. To protect consumers…
76. To foster innovation…
77. To build thriving businesses…
78. It’s on us.
79. Thank you. Thoughts and feedback: @chrismessina