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The Kik Bot Platform

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Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#21

Post by ewzimm »

Aleman360 wrote: post #18
devit wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want…

It's a command line where you don't have to be precise.

Although bots have been around for a long time, most of them have required precise commands. You're right that imprecision is why it can be successful, and the key to making this work is having manager interfaces like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, or Hound which can add layers of abstraction over simpler single-purpose bots. As we standardize communication protocols between bots, it will be easy to send a header describing abilities and responses so that the user interface can both parse the capabilities for the user and send feedback about how to be more responsive to the bot and its programmers. In the end, if this works, we should have a massive amount of machine learning taking place as bots improve each other.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#22

Post by Jordrok »

devit wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want…

I honestly have no idea. Chat bot mania sure seems to be in full swing though. Call me cynical, but all I can see is a lot of tech and development hours desperately in search of a problem to solve.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#24

Post by potatolicious »

devit wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want…

It can be, but with a bunch of caveats that I'm not sure people are fully aware of. There's a fair bit of over-enthusiasm about chat interfaces and IMO not a lot of realization of its limitations.

The usefulness of chat interfaces is proportional to how complex the task is and how poorly the user understands the scope and structure of the task.

To use a contrived example, if you have no idea what's left in your fridge, saying "Computer, restock all my essential groceries" is easier than going into the fridge, figuring out what you need, and ordering it via a traditional interface.

Or think of a customer service hotline, where the caller has no idea what options are even available to them, nor do they understand the hellish tree-structure of the touchtone menus. In these instances natural language interaction can remove the need to understand the structure of the task and get them directly to the thing they need. Many customer service lines are already doing this in a simplistic keyworded way, and they can be better.

On the other hand we're seeing a lot of people try to apply chat/natural language interfaces to tasks that are both simple and well understood by their users, and I think these will be doomed to fail. Ultimately voice/text is harder and more annoying for the user than punching buttons, the tradeoff being that they can be valuable when the task is complex/opaque. Most of these applications don't hit a positive tradeoff for the user - and end up being a complicated/annoyingly unstructured mode of interaction nobody wants to use more than once to show off to their friends.

Simple/well understood things like "call an Uber" I think will be pretty DOA if you try to shoehorn a chatbot into the middle - users will prefer the actual UI over it any day of the week.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#25

Post by kevando »

devit wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want…

Kik CEO actually has a pretty good narrative on this

https://medium.com/@tedlivingston/the-future-of-chat-isn-t-a...

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#27

Post by hkmurakami »

devit wrote: post #7

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want…

What about CLI though?

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#28

Post by fredwilson »

rubiquity wrote: post #3

If your investor has to pimp your idea for you then that probably means it's a dud. The idea of Brand Bots seems really impersonal. I would want Bots for quickly getting through the things I hate doing (returns, troubleshooting) but not for getting coupons by scanning a "Bot sticker" (fancy QR code?).

i pimp everything, so i guess that means everything is a dud. i am an equal opportunity pimper. i plan on pimping again tomorrow on AVC

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#29

Post by rubiquity »

fredwilson wrote: post #28
rubiquity wrote: post #3

If your investor has to pimp your idea for you then that probably means it's a dud. The idea of Brand Bots seems really impersonal. I would want Bots for quickly getting through the things I hate doing (returns, troubleshooting) but not for getting coupons by scanning a "Bot sticker" (fancy QR code?).

i pimp everything, so i guess that means everything is a dud. i am an equal opportunity pimper. i plan on pimping again tomorrow on AVC

I read your blog a lot. Thanks for writing it. But some of the conclusions you're trying to draw in this post feel forced. The "websites -> apps -> bots" deal especially jumps out to me as odd.

Re: The Kik Bot Platform

#30

Post by palakchokshi »

Let's take an example of a general personal assistant chat bot experience and compare it to a brand chat bot experience. Remember in both cases we are typing our conversation not speaking it

General/PA chat bot Me: What movies are playing tonight?

BOT: HBO has XYZ from 8PM to 10PM, UVW from 10PM to midnight. Starz has ABC from 7:30PM to 10:00PM, DEF from 10PM to 12:30AM

Me: No I mean what movies are playing in theaters tonight?

BOT: AMC at Location 1 near you is playing blah blah blah, Century Cinemas at Location 2 near you is playing blah blah blah, (lists off 3 other theaters with movie times)

Me: I want 2 tickets to blah blah at AMC tonight

BOT: Ticket price at AMC.com is $22. Reply with AMC to buy them. Ticket price at Fandango.com is $23. Reply with FAN to buy them.

ME: AMC

BOT: Here are your tickets. http://amc.com/tickets/23BDK532KDJF93434

BRAND CHAT BOT EXPERIENCE ME: What movies are playing tonight?

AMC BOT: At an AMC near you, ABC is playing at 7:30pm, DEF is playing at 7:00PM, GHI is playing at 8:30PM, ABC iMax is playing at 9:00PM

(I switch to the Century Cinemas bot)

ME: What movies are playing tonight?

CENTURY BOT: At a Century near you, XYZ is playing at 8:00PM, ABC is playing at 8:30PM, GHI is playing at 8:30PM

(I switch to another theater's chat bot)

ME: What movies are playing tonight?

BOT: Movie 1 is playing at 9PM, Movie 2 at 9:30PM, Movie 3 at 9:30PM .....

So in the end a general chat bot will be more user friendly than going to each individual brand's chat bot. That basically means developer's not associated with a brand will be building aggregate bots for specific verticals because building a general BOT that addresses any query is impractical for any single developer. Then what happens when multiple developers all target the same vertical? The BOT marketplace becomes littered with duplicates and becomes like the Android marketplace. So basically BOTS = APPS but with a chat interface and some rudimentary NLP rather than a UI.

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