Core design principles Whichever interface you choose for your chatbot, the core principles of good information design must be considered if it’s to be a success. The key ones are clarity and consistency, contextual relevance, progressive disclosure, accessibility, and user control and transparency. Clarity and consistency The chatbot should be clear and consistent. Clarity means… Read more »
Tag: help
The UI of Chatbots: Part 2 Balancing assistance approaches
Balancing assistance approaches Balancing visibility against intrusiveness Microsoft Clippy was infamous for being intrusive and offering irrelevant tips. Chatbots can risk similar frustrations if suggestions are poorly timed or excessive. From a usability perspective, chatbots that help users when they get stuck (reactive assistance) and those that prevent users from getting stuck in the first… Read more »
The UI of Chatbots: Part 1 Understanding chatbot interfaces
The UI of Chatbots Cherryleaf Introduction As organisations adopt chatbots to support their software applications, Technical Authors face new challenges in designing effective user interfaces and adapting documentation for conversational delivery. This article examines the critical role of UI design in chatbot implementation and provides practical guidance for technical communicators. Imagine if your users were… Read more »
Getting users to read the Help rather than call support
We spotted an interesting statement by the “Father of Behaviour Design”, BJ Fogg: “For somebody to do something – whether it’s buying a car, checking an email, or doing 20 press-ups – three things must happen at once. The person must want to do it, they must be able to, and they must be prompted to… Read more »
How to create online Help topics that are editable by clients
In the Agile Technical Writers forum on LinkedIn, one of its members posted this question: “I need to create an contextual online help for an complex web tool (ok, that´s not that hard). The customer must be able to add some specific job instructions to this online help by himself. The customer part must not be overridden when the… Read more »