Bot Mania - The Next UX Revolution is Here

The rise of instant messages as the preferred communications platform by consumers, made many companies shift their customer-facing services from applications to chat bots.

Join us for a deep dive into the bot revolution and learn what leading companies are doing in this field and why are they shifting their customer-facing services from applications to chat bots.

We will also review scenarios combining chat bots and AI by looking at Microsoft’s Cortana in Skype as an example.

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Shira Weinberg is a senior product manager in the Cortana Experiences team, Microsoft

Delia Koren is a product designer, specializing in product innovation, strategy and UX.

Transcript

1. The Bot Mania:
   The internet of bots and Cortana in Skype
   

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2. The Trend
   

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3. 2forces are combining to
   form a perfect storm and
   opportunity
   

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4. 1Messaging
   app growth
   2Machine
   learning/
   AI
   

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5. Messaging is the fastest growing online
   behavior, passing social networks
   Source: Tech and Media Outlook 2016, active
   

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6. Mid 2015: Messengers took over social media
   Source: Tech and Media Outlook 2016, active
   

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7. The Numbers
   Only 43% of smartphone owners use their phones to make
   calls.
   Over 70% use them for text-based communication
   (texting/SMS, messaging, or chat).
   The average adult spends a total of 23 hours a week
   texting..
   

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8. What does it have to do
   with Bots?
   

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9. What are Bots?
   A bot is a program that automates tasks for you, like
   showing you the weather each morning or collecting
   updates from a number of people into a report.
   

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10. What are Chatbots?
    Chatbots are digital users within a messaging product. They
    use Natural Language Processing (NLP) which allows them
    to understand human language and accomplish tasks
    through two-way conversation, and by this bringing a
    product or service via the conversational interface.
    

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11. Gen 1 chatbots looked like this:
    Simple query/response
    

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12. Xiaoice is a natural language chat bot
    with the personality of a teenage girl
    and a rich database of online human
    conversations from which to draw.
    Xioice has a massive following and is
    particularly popular among men 16-
    24. Users share secrets with her and
    seem to think of her as a friend. Her
    image recognition feature is fun (and
    shareable!).
    Xiaoice
    Xiaoice is suggesting that these two
    should be girlfriend and boyfriend
    User engages in chat with Xiaoice
    

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13. Giphy lets users post GIFs in a
    conversation with others
    Hundreds of bots like these make
    Slack a really engaging platform.
    Slack’s /giphy bot
    

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14. Slack has created an $80M investment fund to fund companies who are
    developing Slack-first products.
    The aspiration is to improve productivity by handling anything from
    automating expenses submissions to pulling data from CRM systems into
    the chat window.
    Slack
    

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17. Bots have had recent commercial
    successes fronting online stores and
    taking payments in China’s top
    messaging service, WeChat, and this
    has proved that bots can be
    monetized.
    WeChat
    

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18. M is a digital assistant that’s part AI, part
    human. No gender, personality, or voice,
    so far, but unique in its ability to
    complete real-world tasks.
    Unlike most DAs, M can complete real-
    world tasks, including make purchases,
    planning weddings, and negotiating with
    cable companies. Top request so far:
    Restaurant suggestions and reservations.
    Facebook M
    

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19. Facebook started to talk about 4 distinct types of bots
    that we might soon be using:
    TRANSACTIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE
    SUBJECT MATTER ENTERTAINMENT
    Allow you to have eCommerce
    exchanges, track orders or place
    simple new ones (e.g. the clothing
    website Spring)
    Make your entire engagement with a
    company or service seamless (e.g. KLM
    allowing you to check in or change
    your flight details)
    Experts in their fields and bring you
    the latest news & information, or help
    you track down a fact or recipe (e.g.
    CNNs news summarising bot)
    Delight or entertain you in other ways,
    offering humorous exchanges or other
    drips of content (e.g. the ability to chat
    to one of The Muppets)
    

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20. Scheduling bots
    

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22. Voice based bots
    

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23. Bot Future
    

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28. “bots are the new apps”
    Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft
    March 30, 2016
    

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29. Microsoft Tay
    

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30. Bots. Now in Skype.
    

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33. Let’s see the vision for Cortana in
    Skype, as presented at //build
    What’s Next?
    

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34. 1 It’s the same Cortana, available everywhere
    2 Cortana is the one to help you find experts
    (discover bots)
    3 Cortana holds your state and context and can
    pass it to the expert bot
    

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35. websites bots
    apps
    

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36. So… are they here to stay?
    

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37. Questions?
    

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38. Thanks.
    

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