Conversation Design

Learn about the terms, ideas, and concepts in conversational AI.

What is Conversation design?

A conversation is the exchange of information by language, this is usually thought of being solely between humans. However, with contemporary technology, we often are faced with conversations between humans and AI technologies. The latter type of conversation always has some form of design behind it, this is conversation design. This is the process of designing a natural, two-way interaction between a user and a system (via voice or text). For a conversation to take place, two speakers have a shared mental model and communicate their goals, questions, intentions, and emotion. These principles form the basis of good conversation and conversational AI design.

Creating your first conversation

Creating a conversation using cocohub’s builder is simple, but we all know you gotta start somewhere. So, this is your starting point. Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial. It will guide you with everything you need to create your first awesome avatar! Here, you will learn the first steps in building a conversation, crafting questions and answers – and don’t miss out on the grand finale: Connecting it live to a channel like a video call or a phone number.

Get to Know the Builder

Here are five basic concepts to get you starting on the platform: components, node, transitions, say, and navigation.

Components

Conversational Components make building the dialogue easier by deconstructing conversations into smaller segments. This easy-to-use interface allows you to build multiple conversational flows without any need to code.

Node

When building a conversation in cocohub’s builder, the node is the most basic part. Visually, it’s similar to a brick, so think about it as a building block. We will use various nodes to represent different parts of the conversation. One node can represent what the virtual human is saying, while another can represent the user’s response.

Transitions

The transitions are the links between each node. This is how you will connect your conversation flow. For example, the user could answer “yes” or “no” to a question. Both “yes” and “no” will be within the same node, but the virtual human will give a separate response to each answer. You now can write out a response for both answers in two distinct nodes and use the transitions to guide the conversation either way.

Say

What do you want your virtual human to say? Write that into the “say” node. Anything that you want him/her to say, whether it is a question, an answer, or even a funny joke, you will write that part in the “say” node.

Navigation

Now, choosing what your virtual human will say is simple and straightforward, but what about the user? In other words, we have to consider various responses that the user may say. For this circumstance, we will use the navigation node. The navigation node will allow you to write out limitless responses (or intents) that you can “navigate” to a “say” node.

Many common responses are already written into cocohub’s system. For example, if you add an intent of “yes” will also accept “yeah,” “yup,” “okay,” “sure” etc.

To learn more about how to create and manage intents, use this guide.

If you’re still struggling to build the perfect conversation, no worries. We can assist with that. Build with an expert here.

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Conversation Design

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