Making Chatbot Interactions Come Alive

Ultan Ó Broin

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Oct 14, 2017 · 8 min read

If legendary actress, chanteuse, comedienne, and style icon Mae West was a user experience (UX) pro, she might now be famous for the chatbot design principle, “It’s not the bots in your life that matters, it’s the life in your bots”.

Actually, both parts of Mae’s would-be statement ring true:

• The job to be done by your chatbot is vital because it provides the reason for botifying a task in someone’s life, sure.
• But now the style, tone, and attitude of the chatbot — the personality — encountered along the journey to getting that job done really makes or breaks a great overall user experience. And a satisfying UX that resonates personally is a powerful strategy for creating more customers.

Personality: An Unbroken Series of Successful Gestures — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yes, folks, personality is the new user experience. Designing that personality for the new hotness of conversational user experience is a science as well as an art.

“It’s no coincidence that both Howdy and X.ai — a startup whose bot intelligently schedules meetings via email — each hired writers with performing-arts backgrounds to help define the UX of their products.” — The Next Phase Of UX: Designing Chatbot Personalities

Thankfully, we are witnessing the death of the hostile concept of “the user” and of “using” a system and instead see the emergence of a human design narrative of chatting or conversing with technology.

Personality, therefore, is critical to the success of that natural dialog between humans and computers. It’s beyond the transaction.

Fate doesn’t hang on a wrong or right choice
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice

— The Divine Comedy, Songs of Love

For UX pros what we are talking about here is anthropomorphism (not to be confused with personification). Broadly, you can think of anthropomorphism as the attribution of human motivations, beliefs, and feelings to inanimate things like computers, vehicles, robots, and so on.

Importantly, anthropomorphism does not mean the application of all of the subtle nuances and quirks of human personality into our human-computer interaction, but only the dominant, memorable, important personality traits that will be useful to the interaction in that particular context.

Ah, that UX concept again: context.

So, it is vital for the UX designer of chatbots to make use of important and contextually relevant anthropomorphic principles to create solutions that will resonate with people for the right thing, at the right time, and in the right place.

When we interact with computer interfaces we project human emotions and beliefs into the inanimate computer. When the interaction is smooth and enjoyable we attribute the pleasure to the machine in the same way we blame the machine when things don’t work out as we wish. — Don Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

To an extent, chatbot anthropomorphism and engaging in a digital conversation are determined by the AI capability of your chatbot platform. However, designers (or artists or performers, if you like) now have a central role in crafting chatbot attitude, style, and tone that reflects personality, whether it be by writing scripts prompts, and messages or recording the voice of the chatbot.

Making That Personality Personal

I’ve already outlined how language crafting and conversational scripting skills are at the heart of UX chatbot design, but I’d like to call out some key chatbot personality design considerations.

• Determine the attitude, tone, and style of your chatbot — the personality. This means understanding the personality of your bot given the context of use. Writing about designing for personality is another article in its own right, but check out this Medium piece and this webinar about how you might get started in creating a tone and voice that customers will resonate with your customers.
• If there are toolkits available to help you craft that digital personality, then explore their value. Check out the Apply Magic Sauce tool from the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, for example, to see what a derived digital footprint personality might look like. But, remember to refine and then test your chatbot’s personality with real customers in real situations.
• Introduce your chatbot conversation by saying “hello”, “hi name”, and the like, and by responding to user greetings, asking how people are doing today, and so on.

• Acknowledge that a chatbot is a bot and not a human and say what it can do to help.

• With the “you’re now in the right place” confirmed, ensure your chatbot engages with a flash of personality and begins to create a great user experience. True, there is some debate about whether even naming chatbots matters, but again, that’s another article!
• Avoid repetitive circuitous responses when user input cannot be understood. At some point (maybe the second attempt), admit defeat and seek clarification. Imagine if you had to talk ad infinitum to a real person who “just didn’t get it” and the emotions that would arise!
• Learn from past conversational decisions and prompt recommendations accordingly. That’s kinda like your favorite barista remembering you like a double shot espresso when you walk into the coffee shop. Context is king in making a great customer experience.
• Indicate that the chatbot is being thoughtful about an asked question rather than spewing out a rapid answer. So, those “I’m thinking” indicators are important. This is an emerging technology after all…
• Use humour (perhaps “wit” would be a better word) wisely, in context, and in ways that make sense. Although Irish people like to say “I’m only joking” when things get messy, I can tell you invariably they’re not. And a chatbot making a joke about a transaction can be heart-stopping sometimes….

• Handle the common chit-chat of chatbot interaction (“tell me a joke”, “what’s the weather?”) and engage on time-critical events and topics. This seemingly “throw-away” part of chatbot UX is an important part of the personality. For example, knowing “Did Dublin beat Mayo again at GAA football?” (Of course we did!), when it is International Women’s Day, or when Sinterklaas is arriving, provides an “in the know” moment with real people. This kind of banter is natural, but also a UX vehicle to engage and create a seamless path to guide the conversation back to the core use. Don’t over do it.

• Be as tolerant of chatbot input errors such as typos and grammar goofs as you would when people speak and write IRL Pointing out that someone’s split an infinitive or the difference between “lesser” and “fewer” was never a conversation enabler.
• Be able to process slang, abbreviations, urban lingo, emoji, and so on, depending on the culture. Crafting a chatbot conversation this way is a black art but increasingly we communicate that way. Naturally, your chatbot platform’s capability is critical here too.

• Showing basic manners and things we take for granted IRL— such as saying “thanks”, acknowledging something’s done (“ah, sorted”, “deadly”), or looking for clarification by admitting chatbot limitations of understanding (“help me out here!”) is also an “only human-like after all” trait.

• Show empathy and understanding. For example, Amazon’s Alexa can diplomatically tolerate a lot of inane and even rude conversation, and probably more than the average parent can in dealing with their own kids! However, a pleasant way of dealing with profanity or user frustration is encouraged.

• Avoid prolonging a conversation and trying to continually sell more to a customer. Solve the job to be done problem and close the conversation and confirm the user is done. But, if a chatbot customer wants to discover and do more, then great!
• Avoid open-ended questions; give options and choices instead. “Do you prefer Hip Hop Beyoncé or Glamour Beyoncé?” is a faster way to shape a solution than to ask, “What do you like about Beyoncé?”

• Steer the conversation. Remember the purpose of the chatbot is to solve a problem, so keep bringing the conversation back to that jobs to be done (JTBD) decision. And when will you know when the conversation is over? When the job is done (or the problem is solved)! For now.

Talk the Talk

In conclusion, chatbot design as a natural way of interacting with technology means we are now in the age of a human-centered design approach in the digital space, and not one of “user”-centered design.

Who wants to be called a “user” in any context?

Just imagine. What if Amazon “Alexa” were an “Alex” or all digital assistants were of one gender only and each had a different personality, style, and tone? Think about how this might change your experience and willingness to engage.

Or would it?

Personality is now a competitive differentiator, a way of signaling how useful a conversational UI product is. For example, in a comparison of smart assistants by the BBC, Google Home was judged to be best on personality and design as a result of its friendly tone integrated with some AI “neat touches”.

You must research and test the impact of tone and style nuances. but very often a gut feeling based on guerrilla UX research and simple observations about how we live and work is a good starting point to understanding how chatbot personality can shape the digital journey.

The design of personality for chatbots is a real skill and talent; a hot commodity. This is a fast-moving space, with lots of ideas that span many domains and disciplines, so your views and comments on the topic are welcome!

Ultan Ó Broin (@ultan) is a UX product consultant with digital customers in the U.S. and EMEA. They are a member of the editorial board of MultiLingual.

All screen images are by Ultan O’Broin.

This article has been localized for a Spanish-speaking audience too: La personalidad le da vida a la experiencia de usuario de Chatbot