Persona’s Josh Bocanegra: How To Craft The Perfect Personality — And Make People Notice
(This interview is part of the “7Q Series,” a weekly interview series brought to you by Chatbots Magazine.)
Josh Bocanegra is the CEO and co-founder (with tech savvy singer Christina Milian) of Persona Technologies. He is the mind behind many of today’s most popular celebrity bots, including SelenaBot, Christina Milian’s chatbot, and the Christian Grey chatbot.
His approach to bot building is anthropological in nature and method. We asked him about his botmaking philosophy and his keys to creating a great bot persona.
1. How and why did you become interested in bots? What was your first bot project?
I’ve actually always been a writer and a lover of tech. So artificial intelligence, specifically NLP, has been something I’ve always been interested in. Prior to starting Persona, I was an AI hobbyist working on my own natural language processor and machine learning algorithm.
When Facebook launched Bots for Messenger, I initially thought it would be a great platform to build my NLP algorithm on top of. However, after building my first bot of Selena Gomez, I realized there could be a business model for building bots for celebrities and NLP was not going to be a huge part of it early on.
2. You wrote an article about making the SelenaBot for your daughter. Please explain that project and the realizations about bots, personas, and the possibilities of messaging that clicked with you during that time.
In that article, I mainly cover the reason why I backed away from implementing NLP in bots and how suggested questions worked better. As it turns out, fans simply just don’t know what to ask and given the nature of freeform text, users will always eventually get disappointed when the bot can’t respond to something anyway. I suspect the Facebook Messenger team understood the problem of freeform text when they decided to give developers the option to disable the text field.
Beyond gaining a new unexpected UX perspective in user experience, I also gained a new philosophical outlook towards the world of entertainment. This was important for me to realize as an entrepreneur.
I used to subscribe to the idea that entertainment doesn’t solve a “real problem.” After observing how fans interacted with bots and how willing they were to do virtually anything for those they admire, I now believe entertainers serve an underlying purpose for a lot of what people do.
I recently said in a Facebook status “Music doesn’t solve problems, it helps you through them.” I still think that’s true for for many of us. This is why creating these one-on-one experiences are important. It extends and enhances the experience fans have with the music and their relationship with the artist.
3. Speaking of your daughter, what do you hope is true about bots and messaging when she’s an adult?
My hope is that bots in general become so advanced, that it would be much more effective at teaching, entertaining and inspiring others than humans could. That is, bots that use machine learning to understand users’ individual needs.
I also believe bots will utilize other technologies such as AR, VR and iOT in the future in such a way that offer an even more authentic experience. Persona will continue to be at the forefront of whatever that might be for celebrities.
4. What are the keys to creating a great “persona” (pun intended) for one’s bot? You seem to have some experience in this area.
First and foremost, you have to respect the relationship each celebrity has with their fans. You have to really understand why fans love that particular celebrity before you can design a truly great experience in the bot.
I think of making great bots as making great art. Every choice of word used in bot matters. Each photo used in a carousel matters. The amount of time the bot spends typing to the user matters.
For instances, when a user engages with the Q&A section in Christina Milian’s bot, they’re getting an authentic experience of what it’s actually like to text Christina Milian. Christina and I text every day. So I’ve emulated her texting style within the bot.
I suppose when it’s comes to creating a persona, it’s fair to say that I’m obsessed with accuracy and pay very close attention to detail. I always joke about the time I spent 2 hours debating if I should add a period at the end of each sentence or not.
5. Which bots do you use on a daily basis? Which bots do you spend the most time talking to?
I honestly don’t use any bots outside of my own on a daily basis. I’m very focused on crafting the best experience possible for our users. However, if didn’t build bots, I’d probably use Swelly more often.
6. What’s the best way for bot creators educate the mainstream market on the power/ awesomeness of bots + brands?
I think the best way to educate anyone about a subject is to reference a concept they’re already familiar with. So for us, we only market what the bot can do, not what it is.
For example, when I launched Kehlani’s bot, we never used the word bot in our promos. We always used wording such as “Listen to Kehlani’s new album on Messenger” or “Follow Kehlani on Messenger for exclusive updates.” It’s pretty much as simple as that.
7. How has your life changed since starting Persona?
My life has changed mainly in regards to what I’ve learned in the process of building bots. I physically observe how people use technology more now.
I watch people use our bots in person before launching and do this with different people in different environments. I want to know how someone would use a bot at a coffeeshop, while they’re in the backseat of a Lyft, while they’re in a classroom and while they’re at a house party.
As it turns out, statistical data alone doesn’t offer the best understanding for why people do what they do. Analytics is cool but not that cool. If you don’t actually care about the people using your bot, it’s going to show off in your design.
With that being said, if you’re looking to build a bot for a celebrity or even a public figure not in the entertainment industry, I’d suggest saving yourself the time and just hire Persona to do it. 🤷🏻♂️