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At a high level, I would like to set up an action that has some required inputs and some optional ones. After the user begins, he/she will be prompted for any required inputs that are missing. If/when the required inputs are collected, i would like to ask if the user wants to specify more optional inputs.
The specific use case is a voice-based real estate search. I have some required inputs set up like zip code, price, and number of bedrooms. Then I would like bixby to ask "would you like to refine your search even further?" and if the user says yes, we can ask about number of bathrooms, parking arrangements, and other more niche parameters. I do not want to make all of these required and have to prompt everyone if they want to filter by "pools" or some parameter not widely used. And being voice-based, I do not want to just have it as a checkbox on the screen because someone on the speaker won't be able to use that parameter then.
I have thought of 2 potential solutions but I do not know if they will work (at least without relying on the controls on screen for a voice-based capsule):
1) Make the search into a transaction and then instead of a normal confirmation, try to shoe-horn the confirmation to ask if the user wants to add more refinements. Maybe something like the bank transfer one but a negative confirmation would cause bixby to ask for information that she didnt ask for before: https://bixbydevelopers.com/dev/docs/sample-capsules/walkthroughs/simple-transactional#sample-capsule-walkthrough
2) Make 2 more required inputs, one boolean called "WantsOptionalParameters" and the other called "OptionalParameters" that will be a structure containing all of the optional parameters. Then it would prompt for WantsOptionalParameters like a normal required input, and if that is "True", I can have a sub-action that will ask for each one of the parameters to construct an OptionalParameters object. then we could feed that output into the search. And alternatively, if WantsOptionalParameters is false, we can automatically construct OptionalParameters with all negative responses and feed that into the original action.
Both of these solutions will take a bunch more research and testing and i don't even know if they will work, so i was hoping to call on the wisdom of you guys!
Here is my take on it for what its worth. Every domain has key inputs that are typically used to start the conversation and optional inputs that can refine the conversation.
Some general ways to start conversation for the real estate example (totally driven by my own experience, perhaps there are more)
Hows the real estate market in 90210?
Show me homes under $250K in Los Angeles?
Show me homes with 4 bedrooms (near me?)
You can club such inputs into an input-group called RequiredInputs that requires OneOrMoreOf these parameters to get the capsule started.
You can also collect the optional/niche inputs in another input-group called OptionalInputs that requires ZeroOrMoreOf and feed them into your capsule logic
Its also possible that all inputs are equally important and are all Optional! It is totally dependent on the domain and how the capsule developer might handle such inputs.
But in a general sense, once the set of inputs is in and the initial results are shown to the user, the capsule developer then has a great amount of control to
Shape the future conversation AND
Highlight capsule capabilities.
So, rather than presenting the user with a set of options, you can control the conversation and offer options that provide most value to the user (and to the capsule developer!)
e.g your capsule is capable of deep analyzing and refining results in a way that no other capsule on the market can do. So, you want to highlight this capability as the first choice via followup
Or You may have a conversation path based on prior experiences and your knowledge of the domain. So, you could say, I can refine the results further by X, Y, Z options.
This scenario is more likely to be useful and less likely to overwhelm (with options) the end user.
Hope this helps!
I am trying out some things with Google Dialogflow. The thing I am basically trying to do is ask the user's age. Based on the age, say greater than 50 OR smaller than 50, I want the user to be guided to a specific question for one of the two age groups.
I was looking on the internet for a hint or suggestion, but I can't find examples other than "Yes","No" type of answers which then guide the user to a specific flow.
I basically need the user to say an age, which can be between 1-50 years, and 50-100 years, and any number belonging to any of the two groups should prompt the user to a specific follow-up question for that age group.
Does any one have a tip? Is this even possible in the generic Google Dialogflow? Or would I need to use a webhook/fullfilment for this?
Thanks and regards
The easiest way is to use fulfillment for this sort of thing. Dialogflow Intents are good at capturing what the user has said, and possibly including this as a parameter, but webhooks are best for applying logic and determining output and what context further answers should be considered in.
In the chat application i am developing with dialog flow has scenario like this. Users can ask details about loans that they can get. that is a one intent. once user says the loan type they want i need to save it and use it every where when they ask question. for one example i have a another intent called loan payments.
In that intent they can ask questions like
I am interested in getting a personal loan for a duration of 5 years
and the loan amount would be 5 million rupees. Can you let me know the
monthly repayment amount?
to calculate that, loan type is a must (personal loan in this case). so if any user has specified the loan type before i need to use it here other wise i need to ask users to provide it again. but if i am using context i cant add add required. how to achieve this. also since i have already set the parameters i cant change the value of them. this is how my parameters look like
This is where your business logic comes in picture. Chat application can be built in two ways, directional & open-ended. In first one, you can explicitly go on asking few questions with set options/buttons for the services that you're offering & user has to select any one of them or in the second one, you keep it open for people to type-in anything & then you extract values & respond them based on their inputs.
Now that you're of second type, even if you use contexts, dialogflow offers you a favor to extract parameter values of first intent in the second one. You just have to use, #context_name.parameter_name. But now, if you're saying that if user has already defined loan type in earlier intent then you don't want to ask him again it in next intent, then this is purely a business logic that you will have to code in your webhook. Dialogflow won't do it for you.
I hope, this answers your question & if you don't want to do it that way, go for directional flow.
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How do you go about organizing user stories?
What I did was this for a web application:
Made a title for a web page like 'index', then listed all the stores the user can do on this page.
I continued on for all the pages.
Is this the most effective way?
I personally like the BDD style user stories and tasks. Generally, under BDD/Agile you will create user stories in a planning meeting along the following lines:
As a [role] I need [capability] so that [desired outcome].
A user story really shouldn't be more complex than that, as they are really just placeholders for future conversations (a key aspect of Agile that most companies misunderstand.) Once you get to the point in an iteration where you are ready to implement a user story, you'll generate one or more tasks for that story usually in the form of Concern/Context/Observations:
Concern: Some Activity
Context: When doing such and such
Observation: This thing should be added to the database
Observation: The thing should get a new unique ID
Observation: The thing should be related to that thing
Each task is now written in such a way that it can be directly translated into a BDD-style "specification" test that sets up the context, performs the action of concern, and verifies the observations. (For a great example of how this works with xUnit.NET, see this site.)
It is important when creating user stories not to think too technically. You don't really want to break down your stories to highly technical and low level things like "Create a web page with title 'xyz'. Show stores a, b, and c on this page." Thats super technical and doesn't actually portray any useful business requirements. A story should be more fluid and dynamic and represent the real business requirement: "As a customer I need to see all of the stores that contain the products I am looking for so that I may purchase what I need at a great price." From that user story, you would then end up with tasks that define the more technical aspects of creating this page (I am extrapolating a lot from what I read in your question...forgive me for any artistic license I take in expanding the concept):
Concern: Finding Stores
Context: When looking for a product with the best price
Observation: The web page should display a grid of store thumbnails that contain the users search product
Observation: The stores should be sorted such that those with the lowest price appear near the top of the page
Observation: Clicking on a store's thumbnail should take me to a page on that stores web site that contains the product the user searched for
The above story is pretty high level, and covers the expected behavior of the whole page. The above specification can be used to verify proper behavior of the resulting page, used as baseline for creating automated UI tests, etc. However, there will also be code that drives this page, and additional tasks should be created for those lower level things as well.
Concern: Retrieving Stores
Context: When searching for Store entities containing a specific Product
Observation: A collection of StoreResultDetail should be returned
Observation: The collection of stores may be empty
Observation: Each StoreResultDetail should contain the store name
Observation: Each StoreResultDetail should contain the price of the Product
Observation: Each StoreResultDetail should contain the URL of the store's web site
Observation: Each StoreResultDetail may contain the URL of the Product on that store's web site
The above task could be implemented by a service method on some service, along with any other behaviors required to implement the specification for the whole page.
Once you have your tasks, you can create visual designs to match, implement code and unit tests (or BDD specifications), and QA test your application with proper, clear, and concise documentation to verify your tests against.
Segregating user stories by "web page" seems suboptimal to me -- you should be choosing the set of your pages based on user stories, not vice versa. I would classify by "role" of the user -- in fact, in user centered design, by the "persona" in play.
In our shop, we write up Use Cases. Examples of Use Cases:
Create New Customer Account
Assign User Rights
Receive Order
Accept Payment
We have a form with two columns. The first column is the user, and the second column is the computer system. In the two columns we begin listing actions. The user does this, the system responds like this, etc. We leave gaps between the entries so that the steps flow naturally from left to right, and back again. There's a place on the form that states which roles the use case is applicable to (e.g. Project Manager, Administrator).
From the use cases, we then begin to sketch up web pages.
You can also make Use Case diagrams:
I start with identifying what scenario's the users are going to perform with the application. Normally, these are quite predicatable. A user logs in to a website with a certain task in his/her head and wants to fulfill that task.
I'd limit myself to a scenario as one list of sequential steps. For example, user logs in, user select product, user chooses quantity, user checks out, end.
Having the scenario's written down can also help you to determine what parts of the application are more important that others, and which scenario's can be easily be implemented "in-between". And finally, which scenario's could be a show stopper for the launch of the application.
We group them by feature - or better - Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) so that there add value to the product. Indeed, for instance, there is no way to show something that cannot be created, or to create something that cannot be seen yet. So we group the creation/display so that there are delivered together. Updates and deletions can come later, YMMV.
What I can think of is pre-populating certain form input elements based on the user's geographical information.
What are other ways can you think of to speed up user input on long application forms?
Or at least keep them focus on completing the application form?
If you have a long form, try to prune it down. Don't ask them to fill in fields that you don't really need.
If the form spans several pages, give the user some feedback as to how many more pages there are. We users hate clicking on the continue button wondering if this will be the last page.
Never lose a field that they filled in, no matter what they do. This could have security implications if passwords are involved.
Use dropdowns to provide the user with options unless there are a lot of options that the user would have to scroll through or if the terms in the dropdown aren't widely accepted (e.g. dropdown filled with Systems Engineer, Solution Developer, IT Application... I just want Programmer.).
Provide help for fields that might be hard to fill in (or provide examples).
If it is possible in your case, just collect the bare minimum up front and then allow the user to use the basic features of your service.
For the user to upgrade to a better level of service, they will need to fill in the 2nd form with more detail.
How important it is to you to collect ALL that information up front ? It is worth losing customers by demanding too much from them ? Why not demand it later at a time more convenient to the user.
Creating a multi-step wizard offering only a small number of input fields per step. Ensure that they are aware of how far they have progressed in the sequence.
The psychology is that once a user is 'invested' in a task, they are more likely to continue. If you present the whole list of input fields at once, you scare them off.
Offering musings at each step (cartoon, humor, sayings etc) makes them move to the next step out of curiosity.
Users won't mind filling in long forms if and only if they feel that the questions that you ask are important: otherwise they will be discouraged, and become impatient with it.
Remember, in a web application people have very, very short attention spans. When the user starts feeling that you are asking too much, they're usually right.
Keep required information as few as possible: other info should only be optional, and you have to give something in return to the user to compel them to complete that information.
However you implement it, please please please use some kind of Ajax hearbeat to store their progress server side and repopulate it if it's lost. There is nothing more infuriating to a user that working through a long form and having a browser or network hiccup lose their entire submission.
Whenever it happens to me I generally never give it a second shot, because at that point recreating my submission isn't worth whatever I was signing up for.
Checklist:
Explain clearly the purpose of the form. (What's in it for them?)
Prune, prune, prune, and keep questions clearly relevant!
Give the user feedback on his/her progress (if the form is split over multiple pages)
Ask for as little as you can up-front and leave the rest for later.
Clearly mark required fields
Group fields logically.
Keep labels/headings brief and easy to understand.
Prefill as much as possible - but not too much.
Spread super long forms over multiple pages and allow backtracking.
Cleverly placed "Back", "Save" and "Cancel" buttons put people's minds at ease - even when redundant.
Provide friendly (but clear!) validation error messages, in a timely manner.
Allow the user to reclaim half-filled in forms - don't lose their data!
No matter what you do, do not include a reset button. :-)
Finally:
Explicitly tell the user when the process is finished. ("Thank you! Your application has been sent.")
Tell the user what will happen next. ("A confirmation e-mail has been sent to your e-mail address, and we'll process your application within two working days.")
use Ajax to populate and update the controls asynchronously.It will speedup the filling of long application forms.
Split it up into multiple pages - there's nothing quite so discouraging as seeing that you have another 100 questions to go.
Put validation on each input and check it onblur(). If they get to the end of the page and then it says "question #2 was incorrect", chances are they've forgotten what that one was anyway and it'll be more difficult to return to it. Plus, if they answer a series of similar inputs in a particular, incorrect way, you should let them know straight away (eg: entering dates as mm/dd/yyyy when you want dd/mm/yyy)
Split the form into several steps. It's like how someone is much more likely to read five 3-sentence paragraphs than one big 15-sentence paragraph of the same length.
I agree with tim; just let them fill in the bare minimum information and then leave the rest to profile updates. If any data is necessary for the service offered on your site, ask for it when they try to avail of the service (and no earlier).
That said, I wouldn't advocate the kind of forcing function that adam suggests. It pays to give your users the warm, fuzzy feeling that they are privileged and can use ALL of the services on your site. Although, if you look at it hard enough, adam's and my suggestions are pretty much the same.
If the application needs to include a lot of information, then make sure the user can save at any point, and log off, and log in later to complete the form. This would make more sense if some of the information is not necessarily easily available. Tax returns are an obvious example, where some of the data may need to be calculated, or the user must find the relevant documentation.
In some cases the user might use the same information in multiple applications. In that case it might make sense for the user to register their details (Name, Address, Telephone numbers, etc), which are automatically filled in on each application. For example, if you had a website for a recruitment agency, they may allow users to register their details, and then to apply for a particular job, they can just include a personal statement that applies to that job in particular.
As another consideration, if some information may be incorrect (particular if this is not always clear, such as a CAPTCHA, or a user name that must be unique), either separate it from the rest of the data, or otherwise make it so a mistake doesn't mean the rest of the information must be reentered.
These are basically ways of avoiding the user having to enter the same information twice.