your friendly robot companions
TRANSCRIPT
@XOXCO
Ben Brown
Your Friendly Robot Companions
July 14, 2015
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WHY BOTS?
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Magruder High School Computer Club, ‘95
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Bot History
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1950s
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1960s
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IRC + MUDs + MOOs
1990s
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2000s
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Googly Minotaur
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Active Buddy’s bots were…
WILDLY POPULAR
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Meanwhile…
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Web 2.0
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Smart Phones
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The Cloud
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App Stores
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Automation
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The Opportunity
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Chinese Mobile App UI Trendsby Dan Grover
http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui-trends.html
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“Many institutions that otherwise have native apps or mobile sites have opted instead for official accounts.”
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Major Successes in Messaging
• 800 million active users
• Acquired by Facebook for ~$22 billion in 2014
• 500+ million active users
• 69% of revenue from mobile ad sales
• Valued at $30 billion as standalone business
• 200+ million active users
• $15 billion market valuation
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Services Emerging via SMS
• Order almost anything through text message
• Delivery on-demand with no payment friction
• Get personal assistance via text messaging
• Monthly fee for two human assistants
• Human-assisted AI concierge service
• Available in NY and SF only
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15,000,000 Kik users have had conversations with bots.
350,000,000 messages exchanged.
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How to Make a Bot
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Bots are applications that perform automated tasks.They present a “conversational UI” using primarily text.
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Things Bots Do
• Run scripts
• Use APIs
• Ask questions and collect answers
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Super Simple: External program sends messages to chat room
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var slack = new Slack(process.env.SLACK_HOOK);
slack.send({ text: ‘HELLO WORLD!’, channel: '#dev', username: 'BenBot' });
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Call and Response:Send commands to a bot, receive answers
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var slack = new Slack(process.env.SLACK_HOOK);
app.post('/webhook',function(req,res) {
// the user's message is in req.body.text if (req.body.text=='hello') { slack.send({ text: 'Hello back!', channel: req.body.channel, username: 'BenBot' }); }
})
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Conversational:Have an ongoing dialog with the bot
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var slackbot = require('node-slackbot');
var bot = new slackbot('MY_SLACK_TOKEN');
bot.use(function(message, cb) { console.log(message);
if ('message' == message.type) { console.log(message.user + ' said: ' + message.text); if (message.text=='hello') { bot.sendMessage(message.channel,'Hello yourself'); } } cb();});
bot.connect();
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A different type of software
• It’s used as a group, in a group setting
• It talks like a person…
• But can do things a person can’t!
• It’s all text!
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To create a good bot:
• Learn and document the process
• Plan for lots of contingencies
• Build with personality
• Be polite
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“Be As Smart As A Puppy”
http://berglondon.com/blog/2010/09/04/b-a-s-a-a-p/
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WHY BOTS?
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What does it mean when your entire application is
TEXT?
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TEXT
• Human’s learn to deal with text very young and use it constantly and effortlessly
• Text is very easy to store, transfer, transform and translate
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MESSAGING
• Messages are pushed all the way to the user
• Some kind of messaging is built into every single phone on the planet
• Users are already in the messaging app - your bot is one click away from mom, BFF or boss
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Interesting Questions!
• How to construct, store, execute conversational UI
• What is the baseline expectation for bot behavior? 3 laws type stuff?
• How can bots be made discoverable? How do you know what they can do?
• Does this mean we can finally cancel Creative Cloud?
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Messaging Experience Design
#mxd
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The Bigger Picture
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VOICE
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AI
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ROBOTICS
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@benbrown@xoxco
http://xoxco.com/http://medium.com/why-not/
THANKS!