2. Design
Intro
In the Design stage, you’ll define your roadmap, and create and test out your conversation.
Create Roadmap
Follow these steps to create your digital assistant roadmap:
Create a conversational flow by roleplaying a basic scenario (happy path) where everything goes planned and the user’s request is answered. The dialog flow is a simple back-and-forth conversation between the user and the digital assistant, like two colleagues talking. You can then abstract your dialog to create a conversational roadmap.
See Response Best Practices for some tips on creating your conversational flow.
Output
In the Design stage, you should:
- Create conversational flow and roadmap
- Refine digital assistant responses
- Roleplay using Wizard of Oz testing
Resources
Refine Responses
Follow these steps to refine and test your digital assistant conversation:
- Refine your digital assistant responses. Refer to Response Best Practices for help with this step.
- Test the conversational flow using the Wizard of Oz testing method by having people act as the user and interacting with the digital assistant that they think is a “computer”. Ideally, have the user role played by someone who hasn’t created any of the dialog.
Explain the use case scenario and have the user role interact with the digital assistant role in a natural way. The digital assistant role can only use digital assistant responses in the dialog you created.
What is Wizard of Oz Testing?
Wizard of Oz testing is a process that lets users interact with the digital assistant interface without knowing that a human, the “Wizard”, is generating the responses, rather than a computer. This process lets you test user reactions to your digital assistant before you start developing it.