The past two years at Lloyds Banking Group have been focused on helping define the UX strategy and direction on how the bank should introduce and exploit cognitive technologies. As the sole UX designer of the cognitive team I took part in various proof of concepts (deployed for a limited period) which explored how a chat bot can provide help and support to a customer on various platforms, journeys and brands (Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Bank, Scottish Widows Bank).
A UX role in the world of artificial intelligence is an unconventional one as there are no existing best practices in this field. For this reason part of my role included conducting extensive research and observation such as customer interviews and numerous usability tests to understand user's level of confidence and overall attitude towards AI / chat bots as well as the dialogue capabilities of the system using natural language processing.
Another key part of this role included designing the chat interface which evolved through each proof of concept and explored the use of various interactive form elements such as buttons, images, carousels, dropdowns etc..
As a UX designer part of a chat bot product team using an agile approach, I was helped define a process for designing chat bots. The steps which are now used within the bank as guidelines for future implementations are the following:
1. Define the scope of the chatbot
2. Understand the subject matter and the bot's knowledge domain
3. Understand the users
4. Information architecture: taxonomy and clustering
5. Dialogue flow design
6. Experience Map
7. Script writing
8. Identify UI assets required in the dialogue
9. Conduct usability test
Ux input is required for the majority of these steps however a lot of the effort also goes into into crafting conversations and ensuring high quality in the dialogue between chat bot and customer. In a chat bot dialogue every sentence has to drive the conversation forward and bring the user closer to their goal. Chat conversations are built from a sequence of written actions or dialogue interactions which advance the customer journey:
1. Invitation to chat
2. Opening statement
3. Clarification and disambiguation
4. Confirmation and acknowledgement
5. Hand off to a human agent
6. Answer and query resolutions
7. Capturing feedback
8. Closing statement
9. Handling chit chat
