Build over 8 chatbots and conversational user interfaces with leading tools such as Chatfuel, Dialogflow, Microsoft Bot Framework, Twilio, Alexa Skills, and Google Actions and deploying them on channels like Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa and Google Home About This Book Understand the different use cases of Conversational UIs with this project-based guide Build feature-rich Chatbots and deploy them on multiple platforms Get real-world examples of voice-enabled UIs for personal and home assistance Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who are interested in creating interactive conversational UIs/Chatbots. A basic understanding of JavaScript and web APIs is required. What You Will Learn Design the flow of conversation between the user and the chatbot Create Task model chatbots for implementing tasks such as ordering food Get new toolkits and services in the chatbot ecosystem Integrate third-party information APIs to build interesting chatbots Find out how to deploy chatbots on messaging platforms Build a chatbot using MS Bot Framework See how to tweet, listen to tweets, and respond using a chatbot on Twitter Publish chatbots on Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa In Detail Conversation as an interface is the best way for machines to interact with us using the universally accepted human tool that is language. Chatbots and voice user interfaces are two flavors of conversational UIs. Chatbots are real-time, data-driven answer engines that talk in natural language and are context-aware. Voice user interfaces are driven by voice and can understand and respond to users using speech. This book covers both types of conversational UIs by leveraging APIs from multiple platforms. We'll take a project-based approach to understand how these UIs are built and the best use cases for deploying them. We'll start by building a simple messaging bot from the Facebook Messenger API to understand the basics of bot building. Then we move on to creating a Task model that can perform complex tasks such as ordering and planning events with the newly-acquired-by-Google Dialogflow and Microsoft Bot framework. We then turn to voice-enabled UIs that are capable of interacting with users using speech with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. By the end of the book, you will have created your own line of chatbots and voice UIs for multiple leading platforms. Style and approach This is a practical book, where each chapter focuses on a chatbot project. The chapters take a step-by-step approach to help you build intelligent chatbots that act as personal assistants.

This book will help you to discover important AWS services such as S3 and DyanmoDB. Gain practical experience building end-to-end application workflows using NodeJS and AWS Lambda for your Alexa Skills Kit. You will be able to build conversational interfaces using voice or text and deploy them to platforms like Alexa, Facebook Messenger and Slack.

From Facebook Messenger to Kik, and from Slack bots to Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and email bots, the new conversational apps are revolutionizing the way we interact with software. This practical guide shows you how to design and build great conversational experiences and delightful bots that help people be more productive, whether it’s for a new consumer service or an enterprise efficiency product. Ideal for designers, product managers, and entrepreneurs, this book explores what works and what doesn’t in real-world bot examples, and provides practical design patterns for your bot-building toolbox. You’ll learn how to use an effective onboarding process, outline different flows, define a bot personality, and choose the right balance of rich control and text. Explore different bot use-cases and design best practices Understand bot anatomy—such as brand and personality, conversations, advanced UI controls—and their associated design patterns Learn steps for building a Facebook Messenger consumer bot and a Slack business bot Explore the lessons learned and shared experiences of designers and entrepreneurs who have built bots Design and prototype your first bot, and experiment with user feedback

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the conversational interface, which is becoming the main mode of interaction with virtual personal assistants, smart devices, various types of wearable, and social robots. The book consists of four parts. Part I presents the background to conversational interfaces, examining past and present work on spoken language interaction with computers. Part II covers the various technologies that are required to build a conversational interface along with practical chapters and exercises using open source tools. Part III looks at interactions with smart devices, wearables, and robots, and discusses the role of emotion and personality in the conversational interface. Part IV examines methods for evaluating conversational interfaces and discusses future directions.

With recent advances in natural language understanding techniques and far-field microphone arrays, natural language interfaces, such as voice assistants and chatbots, are emerging as a popular new way to interact with computers. They have made their way out of the industry research labs and into the pockets, desktops, cars and living rooms of the general public. But although such interfaces recognize bits of natural language, and even voice input, they generally lack conversational competence, or the ability to engage in natural conversation. Today’s platforms provide sophisticated tools for analyzing language and retrieving knowledge, but they fail to provide adequate support for modeling interaction. The user experience (UX) designer or software developer must figure out how a human conversation is organized, usually relying on commonsense rather than on formal knowledge. Fortunately, practitioners can rely on conversation science. This book adapts formal knowledge from the field of Conversation Analysis (CA) to the design of natural language interfaces. It outlines the Natural Conversation Framework (NCF), developed at IBM Research, a systematic framework for designing interfaces that work like natural conversation. The NCF consists of four main components: 1) an interaction model of “expandable sequences,” 2) a corresponding content format, 3) a pattern language with 100 generic UX patterns and 4) a navigation method of six basic user actions. The authors introduce UX designers to a new way of thinking about user experience design in the context of conversational interfaces, including a new vocabulary, new principles and new interaction patterns. User experience designers and graduate students in the HCI field as well as developers and conversation analysis students should find this book of interest.

Build your own chatbot using Python and open source tools. This book begins with an introduction to chatbots where you will gain vital information on their architecture. You will then dive straight into natural language processing with the natural language toolkit (NLTK) for building a custom language processing platform for your chatbot. With this foundation, you will take a look at different natural language processing techniques so that you can choose the right one for you. The next stage is to learn to build a chatbot using the API.ai platform and define its intents and entities. During this example, you will learn to enable communication with your bot and also take a look at key points of its integration and deployment. The final chapter of Building Chatbots with Python teaches you how to build, train, and deploy your very own chatbot. Using open source libraries and machine learning techniques you will learn to predict conditions for your bot and develop a conversational agent as a web application. Finally you will deploy your chatbot on your own server with AWS. What You Will Learn Gain the basics of natural language processing using Python Collect data and train your data for the chatbot Build your chatbot from scratch as a web app Integrate your chatbots with Facebook, Slack, and Telegram Deploy chatbots on your own server Who This Book Is For Intermediate Python developers who have no idea about chatbots. Developers with basic Python programming knowledge can also take advantage of the book.

Create conversational UIs using cutting-edge frameworks Key FeaturesBuild AI chatbots and voicebots using practical and accessible toolkitsDesign and create voicebots that really shine in front of humansWork with familiar appliances like Alexa, Google Home, and FB MessengerDesign for UI success across different industries and use casesBook Description We are entering the age of conversational interfaces, where we will interact with AI bots using chat and voice. But how do we create a good conversation? How do we design and build voicebots and chatbots that can carry successful conversations in in the real world? In this book, Rachel Batish introduces us to the world of conversational applications, bots and AI. You’ll discover how - with little technical knowledge - you can build successful and meaningful conversational UIs. You’ll find detailed guidance on how to build and deploy bots on the leading conversational platforms, including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Facebook Messenger. You’ll then learn key design aspects for building conversational UIs that will really succeed and shine in front of humans. You’ll discover how your AI bots can become part of a meaningful conversation with humans, using techniques such as persona shaping, and tone analysis. For successful bots in the real world, you’ll explore important use-cases and examples where humans interact with bots. With examples across finance, travel, and e-commerce, you’ll see how you can create successful conversational UIs in any sector. Expand your horizons further as Rachel shares with you her insights into cutting-edge voicebot and chatbot technologies, and how the future might unfold. Join in right now and start building successful, high impact bots! What you will learnBuild your own AI voicebots and chatbotsUse familiar appliances like Alexa, Google Home, and Facebook MessengerMaster the elements of conversational user interfacesKey design techniques to make your bots successfulUse tone analysis to deepen UI conversation for humansCreate voicebots and UIs designed for real-world situationsInsightful case studies in finance, travel, and e-commerceCutting-edge technology and insight into the future of AI botsWho this book is for This book is for you, if you want to deepen your appreciation of UI and how conversational UIs - driven by artificial intelligence - are transforming the way humans interact with computers, appliances, and the everyday world around us. This book works with the major UI toolkits available today, so you do not need a deep programming knowledge to build the bots in this book: a basic familiarity with markup languages and JavaScript will give you everything you need to start building cutting-edge conversational UIs.