So perhaps chatbots are an excellent method for building out a prototype in a new field while you collect usage statistics to build a more refined UX - but it is bizarre that so many businesses seem to be discarding battle tested UXes for chatbots.
Thing is, for those who paid attention to the last chatBot hype cycle, we already knew this. Look at how Google Assistant was portrayed back in 2016. People thought you'd be buying starbucks via the chat. Turns out the starbucks app has a better UX
The only reason for the voice interface is to facilitate the production of a TV show. By having the characters speak their requests aloud to the computer as voice commands, the show bypasses all the issues of building visual effects for computer screens and making those visuals easy to interpret for the audience, regardless of their computing background. However, whenever the show wants to demonstrate a character with a high level of computer mastery, the demonstration is almost always via the touchscreen (this is most often seen with Data), not the voice interface.
TNG had issues like this figured out years ago, yet people continue to fall into the same trap because they repeatedly fail to learn the lessons the show had to teach.
>changes bass to +4 because the unit doesn't do half increments
“No volume up to 35, do not touch the EQ”
>adjusts volume to 4 because the unit doesn’t do half increments
> I reach over, grab my remote, and do it myself
We have a grandparent that really depends on their Alexa and let me tell you repeatedly going “hey Alexa, volume down. Hey Alexa, volume down. Hey Alexa, volume down,” gets really old lol we just walk over and start using the touch interface
This general concept (embedding third parties as widgets in a larger product) has been tried many times before. Google themselves have done this - by my count - at least three separate times (Search, Maps, and Assistant).
None have been successful in large part because the third party being integrated benefits only marginally from such an integration. The amount of additional traffic these integrations drive generally isn't seen as being worth the loss of UX control and the intermediation in the customer relationship.
A UX is better and another app or website feels like the exact separation needed.
Booking flights => browser => skyscanner => destination typing => evaluation options with ai suggestions on top and UX to fine-tune if I have out of the ordinary wishes (don’t want to get up so early)
I can’t imagine a human or an AI be better than is this specialized UX.
At least in my domains, the "battle-tested" UX is a direct replication of underlying data structures and database tables.
What chat gives you access to is a non-structured input that a clever coder can then sufficiently structure to create a vector database query.
Natural language turns out to be far more flexible and nuanced interface than walls of checkboxes.
Not an agent, but I've seen people choose doctors based on asking ChatGpt for criteria and the did make those appointments. Saved them countless web interfaces to dig through.
ChatGpt saved me so much money by searching for discount coupons on courses.
It even offered free entrance passwords on events I didn't know had such a thing (I asked it where the event was and it also told me the free entrance password it found on some obscure site).
I've seen doctors use ChatGpt to generate medical letters -- Chat Gpt used some medical letters python code and the doctors loved the result.
I've used ChatGpt to trim an energy bill to 10 pages because my current provider generated a 12 page bill in an attempt to prevent me from switching (because they knew the other provider did not accept bills of more than 10 pages).
Combined with how incredibly good codex is, combined with how easily chat gpt can just create throw away one-time apps, no way the whole agent interface doesn't eat a huge chunk of the traditional UX software we are used to.
Have you ever worked in a corporation? Do you really think that Windows 8 UI was the fruit of years of careful design? What about Workday?
> but it is bizarre that so many businesses seem to be discarding battle tested UXes for chatbots
Not really. If the chatbot is smart enough then chatbot is the more natural interface. I've seen people who prefer to say "hey siri set alarm clock for 10 AM" rather than use the UI. Which makes sense, because language is the way people literally have evolved specialized organs for. If anything, language is the "battle tested UX", and the other stuff is temporary fad.
Of course the problem is that most chatbots aren't smart. But this is a purely technical problem that can be solved within foreseeable future.
It's quicker that way. Other things, such as zooming in to an image, are quicker with a GUI. Bladerunner makes clear how the voice UI is poor for this compared to a GUI.
Imagine going to a shop and browsing all the aisles vs talking to the store employee. Chatbot is like the latter, but for a webshop.
Not to mention that most webshops have their categories completely disorganized, making "search by constraints" impossible.
I don't think it's necessary to resort to evolutionary-biology explanations for that.
When I use voice to set my alarm, it's usually because my phone isn't in my hand. Maybe it's across the room from me. And speaking to it is more efficient than walking over to it, picking it up, and navigating to the alarm-setting UI. A voice command is a more streamlined UI for that specific task than a GUI is.
I don't think that example says much about chatbots, really, because the value is mostly the hands-free aspect, not the speak-it-in-English aspect.
I do that all the time with Siri for setting alarms and timers. Certain things have extremely simple speech interfaces. And we've already found a ton of them over the last decade+. If it was useful to use speech for ordering an uber, it would've been worth it for me to learn the specific syntax Alexa wanted.
Do I want to talk to a chatbot to get a detailed table of potential flight and hotel options? Hell no. It doesn't matter how smart it is, I want to see them on a map and be able to hover, click into them, etc. Speech would be slow and awful for that.
Ah yes, it's just a small detail. Don't worry about it.
