Principles of bot design

Principles of bot design

By learning the concepts described in this section, you'll become equipped to design a bot that aligns with best practices and capitalizes on lessons learned thus far in this relatively new arena.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to drive changes in how enterprises innovate and communicate their business. But for the humans and consumers interfacing with products affected by this technology, what will an AI-empowered future look like? What will it feel like? Empowered by rapidly advancing machine intelligence, product designers are rethinking the fundamental principles that guide the way they work.

The QuBot platform enables businesses and developers to create ChatBot experiences that solve a variety of business problems. By learning the concepts described in this section, you'll become equipped to design a bot that aligns with best practices and capitalizes on lessons learned thus far in this relatively new arena.

Building a bot

If you are building a bot, it is safe to assume that you are expecting users to use it. It is also safe to assume that you are hoping that users will prefer the bot experience over alternative experiences like apps, websites, phone calls, and other means of addressing their particular needs. In other words, your bot is competing for users' time against things like apps and websites. So, how can you maximize the odds that your bot will achieve its ultimate goal of attracting and keeping users? It's simply a matter of prioritizing the right factors when designing your bot.

Users interact with your application through the user interface that you implement. For example, A simple chat window or a mobile app, or even a robot with a voice interface.

The chatbot's first user interaction

First impressions matter

The very first interaction between the user and bot is critical to the user experience. When designing your bot, keep in mind that there is more to that first message than just saying "hi." When you build an app, you design the first screen to provide important navigation cues. Users should intuitively understand things such as where the menu is located and how it works, where to go for help, what the privacy policy is, and so on. When you design a bot, the user's first interaction with the bot should provide that same type of information. In other words, just saying "hi" won’t be enough.