AI in conversation

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has been getting a lot of attention recently and the early AI projects I worked on at Skype and Microsoft are more relevant than ever now.

I was part of the Conversation as a Platform (CaaP) team at Microsoft, designing for scenarios where ‘Cortana’ and ‘Bots’ (Microsoft’s early AI services) could help customers with tasks such as booking cinema tickets, hotel stays or setting reminders and To-Do’s. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella announced the intelligent service during Build 2016.

Early AI in Skype explorations, how do we introduce Cortana and AI?

On first run when AI services become available, Cortana sends an introductory message that appears in recents.

Cortana and AI in group conversations

All members of the group have to have previously added Cortana as a service or they will be prompted before they can interact with the AI in group conversations.

AI being proactive

There were many iterations and examples of how we could make Cortana behave and feel like she is being proactive. However we didn’t want her to come off as being disruptive or getting in the way. We opted to highlight relevant text the AI service could help with, leaving it up to the user to decide whether to tap on the link or not.

The scenario below shows the AI recognising some relevant parts of a conversation, the user taps movies tonight, or the secret life of pets highlighted links, adding it to the conversation. The AI can then provide further value to book tickets or get directions.

AI suggestions in conversation

Put it all together and you get a functioning prototype to help tell the ‘Conversation As A Platform’ story.

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Product design leadership, strategy and mentoring. Find out more About me, drop me a message and send an email to keith@keithsymons.com or use this form to get in touch, I'll look forward to hearing from you. Many thanks.