🌝 🤹🏽 ⛳️ How to become a dialog designer 🚋 👩🏿‍🤝‍👨🏾 📪

I offer you a translation and squeeze from an article by my partner Hans van Dam about how to design dialogs. The authorship of the article belongs to Hans. I help him share this unique knowledge with future developers and dialogue designers.

If people and AI will live and work together, they need to communicate with each other. This is where dialogue designers come into play.

Dialogue designers are text creators that help chat bots and voice assistants be more helpful, natural, and compelling. They build trust between people and AI, and help companies truly unlock the communication potential of AI. If you look at today's technology environment as a whole, you will realize that the design of virtual dialogs is becoming an increasingly important task. Therefore, let's consider those issues that you should think about before starting work.

Below are 7 questions to ponder.

Understanding the balance between technology, psychology and language
Creating a credible image
Human oriented design
Using role play and sample dialogs
Ease of borderline cases

Time to get ready and ...!

1. Understanding the balance between technology, psychology and language

The fact is that if people and robots have to communicate with each other, then difficulties will arise. The robot has an artificial brain, and humans have a human.

They work in completely different ways. They have their own capabilities and their limitations. In addition, for their normal functioning, different stimuli act on them. The artificial brain needs structural data such as intention, variables, and language elements. At the same time, for the human brain to function properly, empathy, guidance and support are needed. Language helps the effective work of both the human and artificial brain.

As dialogue designers, we need to understand technology, psychology, and language. Only then can we balance the communication capabilities of AI and optimize interaction with users, thus improving their communication.

2. Creating a credible image

If you think about it, communicating with something artificial seems strange. If such communication is poorly organized, it can quickly become unpleasant. Of course, we strive for something else.

To build communication, you need to create a bot image. This is his personality, manifested in communication. This is where the words spoken by your chat bot or voice assistant are created. You should create an integral image that will allow you to develop the appropriate dictionary. He will find a response from your users in the course of communication. An image is not just your brand, it is a character created specifically for your brand and user.

High-quality image development will allow you to use the language effectively, which will attract the user, create a sense of integrity and trust. The forces of the Conversational Academy created the whole process of image development, so in this blog post we will limit ourselves to what has already been said, and we will not go to individual details.

3. Human oriented design

Human orientation is the main element of effective interaction in communication. Most bots are now being developed by engineers, and they do not have the most outstanding communication skills.

The communication they create is often not focused on the person. There is little empathy in it, and this can both embarrass the user and make him feel insignificant. As a result, the user may want to stop such interaction. Therefore, in our work, we should focus on the person. We need to identify what is disturbing and what motivates the user, what is the general context and situation. We need the most complete knowledge of these issues in order to use them to create an interaction in which users feel they understand. This builds confidence in communication, and this will allow you to control communication.

The user will allow you to guide him if he feels that you understand him. So more conversations between the bot and the user will be completed and more pleasant for the user.

The dialogue process The Robocopy Conversation Design Process will provide you with a few simple diagrams that provide a person-centered approach. Follow these steps sequentially, and your bot will become natural and empathic.

4. The use of role-playing games and sample dialogs

During the development of dialogs, special attention should be paid to the creation of standard dialogs and to the distribution of roles so that communication is natural.

Starting from point 3 of the scheme, you will need a clear understanding of the needs of your user, as well as a good idea of the abilities and limitations of your bot.

The time has come for role play. We will use improvised theater to determine the most natural course of conversation between the interlocutors. One person will play the role of user. Another will play the role of your chat bot or voice assistant. They sit next to back to back and start a conversation. This allows them - in a few repetitions - to work out the most natural course of conversation. It is important that the interlocutors do not see each other. This forces them to use words not only for explanation, but also for translating into verbal form all visual communication characteristic of communication between people.

5. Ease of borderline cases

Of course, I always want to get answers to all questions. However, this can only earn a headache. You need to spend as little time as possible to solve those situations that are unlikely to ever happen. Therefore, you need to concentrate on the positive course of the conversation.

In this case, the Pareto principle works. Apply its 80/20 principle when developing dialogs. In terms of creating conversations, this means that 80% of your users will go through 20% of your conversations. These are often repeated situations, not complicated and not exceptional. You need to show users your attention and care, and therefore do not spend too much time on borderline cases.

You won’t even notice how to spend 80% of your time on 20% of your users, working on all the strange cases and exceptions. This should be avoided. In difficult situations, it is better to redirect the user to an agent or to a website where more detailed information is posted. For example, we can easily create a dialogue for a couple booking a table in a restaurant. But the situation can be complicated when booking a table with 9 seats, where two people are allergic to gluten, and four move in wheelchairs. Of course, we are glad to see these guests in our restaurant, but we do not need to develop a dialogue for this exceptional case. Why not recommend customers call us so that we can arrange for them the perfect table and wonderful dinner in our restaurant.

Conclusion

This, of course, is far from all you need to know before starting work on creating dialogs. We mentioned only the basic concepts that you should think about before starting your next project. If you want to know more, visit Conversational Academy at any time convenient for you. Write to us by mail, sign up for a training course or join our group to communicate with like-minded people.

Good luck in design!