Some good conversational UI examples to learn from

December 19, 2016December 22, 2016 marcabraham1 Comment

It was Dennis Mortensen – CEO/Founder of x.ai – who made me aware a few years ago of the concept of ‘invisible interfaces’. He talked about applications no longer needing a graphical user interface (GUI), taking “Amy” – x.ai’s virtual personal assistant as a good example (see Fig. 1 below).

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Fig. 1 – Amy, x.ai’s virtual assistant – Taken from: http://www.agilenetnyc.com/business/x-ai/

Since then, I’ve been keeping more of an eye out for bots and virtual assistants, which can run on Slack, WeChat, Facebook Messenger or Amazon Echo. Like “Amy” these applications can be driven entirely by complex machine learning algorithms, or can be more ‘smoke and mirrors’ and operated entirely by humans. Let’s just have a look at some relevant examples to illustrate where I think some of these virtual assistants and chatbots are heading.

Example 1 – Nordstrom Chatbot and Operator offering personalised discovery:

US based Nordstrom recently launched its first chatbot for the 2016 holiday season. If you’re already on Facebook Messenger or Kik, Nordstrom’s virtual assistant is only a click away. Users who engage with Nordstrom’s bot will be asked a number of questions about who they’re shopping for. The bot will then respond with bespoke gift suggestions based on the user’s responses.

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Fig. 2 – Nordstrom Chatbot – Taken from: https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-complete-beginner-s-guide-to-chatbots-8280b7b906ca#.l5e2i887r

You can get a similar experience using Operator, which is driven entirely by human experts who’ll provide you with personalised advice on what to buy (see Fig. 3 below).

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Fig. 3 – Operator’s experts providing tailored advice to its users – Taken from: https://www.operator.com/

Example 2 – KLM sharing flight information via Facebook Messenger:

KLM, the well known international airline, now enables customer to receive their flight documentation via Facebook Messenger. After booking a flight on KLM’s website, customers can choose to receive their booking confirmation, check-in details, boarding pass and flight status updates via Messenger. It’s built on a Messenger plug-in which customers only have to enable in order to receive ‘personalised’ messages from KLM (see Fig. 4 below).

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Fig. 4 – Screenshot of KLM’s Messenger app – Taken from: https://messenger.klm.com/

Example 3 – Telegram using buttons for discovery and shortcuts:

As much as it’s great to have a very simple ‘single purpose’ conversational user interface, there are messenger apps and virtual assistants out there that do offer user functionality that works better with buttons to click. A good example is the Telegram app, which has buttons for specific actions and shortcuts (see Fig. 5 below).

Fig. 5 – Screenshot of the buttons in Telegram’s messenger app – Taken from: http://alistapart.com/article/all-talk-and-no-buttons-the-conversational-ui

Main learning point: I’ll no doubt learn more about conversational user interfaces over the coming months and years, but looking at simple examples like x.ai, Nordstrom’s Chatbot, Operator, Telegram and KLM’s Messenger feels like a very good starting point!

Related links for further learning:

Lending revisited: Bond Street

October 11, 2016 marcabrahamLeave a comment

Bond Street lends to small businesses that might typically struggle to get a loan from traditional banks. In a recent talk on a MIT Fintech course that I was doing, David Haber – Bond Street’s CEO/Founder – mentioned how Bond Street saw a clear niche in the market for small business loans and acted on it. Haber encountered a problem that seemed pretty common for early stage, online small businesses: banks or other financial services offering small loans for short durations at high rates. To resolve this problem, Bond Street offers loans range between $50k-$500k, for as long as 1-3 years and with rates starting at 6% (see Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1 – Loan size, rate and terms comparison between Bond Street and other small business lenders – Taken from: https://bondstreet.com/

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Fig. 2 – Overview of Bond Street positioning – Taken from: https://bondstreet.com/blog/an-introduction-to-small-business-financing/

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In the MIT talk, Haber mentioned that OnDeck – a direct competitor of Bond Street – offers small business loans for an average amount of $35k, 10 months’ duration and charges of 40% Annual Percentage Rate (‘APR’). Bond Street competes on rate and speed, but as Haber explained, the business is very focused on “offering more value beyond the economics of a loan, since capital is essentially a commodity.”

Haber then explained that technology allows Bond Street to not just innovate on the loan transaction itself, but to provide a great customer experience on either side of the transaction. For example, by offering a borrower data about similar size businesses, the borrower can then make a better informed decision about taking up a loan.

Fig. 3 – Screenshot of Bond Street online loan application form – Taken from: https://www.nav.com/blog/376-decoding-a-loan-offer-from-bondstreet-4788/

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Haber mentioned one other thing which really resonated with me: “building an ecosystem around your business.” By, for example, leveraging data on an entrepreneur across a network of (similar) entrepreneurs, Bond Street and others can really help people grow their businesses. This doesn’t mean committing data violations, but using data to build an ongoing relationship with one’s customers, and being able to warn them about potential risks or suggest new market opportunities.

A great example is how easy Bond Street makes it for its customers to link to their accounting packages (see Fig. 4 below). I see this is a simple but good example of creating an ecosystem where data is combined in such a way that people and business can derive tangible benefits from it. Through linking to your accounting package as part of the loan application process, businesses save a lot of precious time and effort, since they no longer have to manually input all kinds of financial data.

Fig. 4 – Screenshot of Bond Street’s functionality which links to one’s accounting software – Taken from: https://www.nav.com/blog/376-decoding-a-loan-offer-from-bondstreet-4788/

bondstreet-accounting-link

Main learning point: Even though lending isn’t a new proposition, I really like what Bond Street are doing when it comes to offering loans to small businesses. It has carved out a specific market niche – small, early stage businesses – that it targets with a compelling proposition and an intuitive customer experience to match.

Related links for further learning:

App review: Abra

October 3, 2016 marcabraham3 Comments

abra-1

The main reason why I’m excited about Abra – a US-based peer-to-peer payments startup – is that people become tellers or ‘human ATMs’ who expense cash at hand to the recipient. The Philippines is a key target market for Abra, and it facilitates seamless payments between residents of the US and the Philippines.

Recent stats show that about two-thirds of the adult Philippine population is still unbanked. Currently, Filipinos will have to go to a local exchange ‘business’ (often a one-man band or small operation that does foreign exchange as one of its activities), fill out paper forms to send or receive money abroad. This can be very time-consuming, costly or unreliable.

Abra’s mission is to change all this and make cross-border peer-to-peer payments as easy and seamless as possible. This is how they do it:

Deposit money into the Abra app – Users can deposit money into the Abra app either via a linked bank account, or by using Abra’s network of Abra Tellers, which are like human ATM machines (see Fig. 1 below). Each Teller will set their own fee with the customer, after which the Teller and the customer will meet up in person to accept a cash deposit and credit the customer’s account with funds (or vice versa, if the user wants to cash out) (see Fig. 2 below).
Convert into Bitcoins – After a user’s account is credited with the necessary funds, the money is instantly converted to bitcoin behind the scenes, but still denominated in a traditional currency. What I like about Abra is that it doesn’t really talk that much on its website or its other comms about using bitcoins to underpin these payments. Abra, however, does use bitcoins and shared ledgers to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions without the need for an intermediary.
Send and withdraw money – Customers can use the Abra app to send and withdraw money, or buy things online where Abra is accepted by the seller. The company generates revenue by charging a .25 percent fee to a customer upon transacting with an Abra Teller.
You don’t need a bank account – One of the key upsides of Abra in my opinion, is that you don’t need to have a bank account to do a transaction through the platform. Competitors like Simple and Venmo still require users to add their bank accounts, whereas Abra let’s people transact without the need for a bank account.

Main learning: I’m really excited about innovations like Abra; using bitcoins and blockchain technology to solve a real-world problem and enabling unbanked people transact easily and cheaply.

Fig. 1 – Add money through Abra – Taken from: http://fintechranking.com/2015/03/05/why-we-started-abra/

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Fig. 2 – Finding and engaging with Abra Tellers – Taken from: https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/10/abra-raises-12m-in-series-a-funding-for-its-bitcoin-based-remittance-service/

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Related links for further learning:

CarStory and its ways to enhance your car inventory

April 22, 2015 marcabrahamLeave a comment

The other day I came across CarStory. Since I’ve started with car comparison site carwow I’ll always keep an eye out for similar sites, changing the way in which consumer buy new or used cars. Given that I’m not a US based car dealer, my testing of the CarStory site and app is limited. I did, however, learn quite a lot about CarStory’s service by reading reviews and watching videos.

These are the main things that I learned about CarStory:

Mission statement – “Turn car shoppers into customers” is CarStory’s main tagline. On its homepage, there’s a succinct description of CarStory’s value proposition. The service is aimed at car dealers, providing them with a “CarStory” to their inventories. A CarStory is a market report which “tells a story”, highlighting your cars’ unique features and value in the local market (see an example in Fig. 1 below). CarStory’s goals are to (1) build consumer confidence and (2) accelerate purchase decisions.
Use cases – I guess the main benefit for dealers using CarStory is that they will have a good bit of car specific info at hand, not having to check multiple sources to answer customer questions about e.g. fuel consumption, features or alternative models (see Fig. 2 below). From a customer’s perspective, dealers are likely to be set up well for specific questions e.g. about price comparison or the most popular features on a specific car.
Infographics – Apart from vehicle specific ‘story cards’, dealers can also use CarStory’s infographics to provide their customers with more data and insight about a specific model. For example, I can look at high level supply and demand data for a specific model (see Fig. 3 below).

Main learning point: CarStory offers an interesting way of creating market reports and integrating these reports into a dealer’s daily workflow. It currently only seems to apply to used cars and it would be good to find out from a customer’s perspective how the CarStory data and insights help in making purchasing decisions, whether it’s for a new or a used car.

Fig.1 – Screenshots of a sample CarStory – Taken from: https://www.carstory.com/static/img/market_sample.pdf

Fig. 2 – CarStory use cases – Adapted from: http://blog.carstory.com/business-development-sell-more-with-carstory/

Identify other cars in your inventory to match customer needs – A dealer is on the phone with a customer and can use CarStory to check his inventory to see if there are any cars in the other to meet a customer’s requirements.
Provide car specific info on the phone, email or on text – With the data included in a CarStory for a specific vehicle, dealers will be able to answer specific customer questions on the phone, email or on text. The idea is that customers don’t necessarily need to come into the dealership to find out certain details about a car.

Fig. 3 – Example of a CarStory infographic – Taken from: http://blog.carstory.com/market-reports-dodge-caravan-infographic/

Related links for further learning:

Discovering more about social collaboration software

September 1, 2013 marcabraham4 Comments

Recently I found myself looking into the world of ‘enterprise collaboration’ tools. The key thing I love about such applications is the amount of transparency they offer. Suddenly, discussions, thoughts, suggestions and documents become a lot more visible and accessible.

In a previous role I had worked a lot with tools like Jive and Basecamp and I’ve recently been ‘collaborating’ a lot through Asana and Yammer. It made me realise that even though a lot of these tools set out to provide a similar value or proposition, there are nevertheless some differences worth looking into:

Online collaboration vs online project management (1) – People can collaborate around ideas or specific projects, or both. Yammer is great as a tool to collaborate around ideas whereas Basecamp and Asana are more geared towards project management. As my ex-colleague Daniel Siddle – who specialises in this area – put it: “real-time collaboration is a hard one to get right since the concrete end goal can be much harder to define and less tangible compared to using online project management software.” With project management software the tangible outcome is that you can deliver a project faster but with social collaboration software things can be a lot less tangible.
Online collaboration vs online project management (2) – What I like most about using tools such as Yammer, Jive, Chatter (Salesforce) and Confluence is that they enable full transparency, keeping all relevant communications in a single place. When working on specific projects, tools such as Podio (see Fig. 2 below) and Basecamp (see Fig. 3 below) can provide visibility on project progress and on who’s doing what. One thing I learned from having another play with some of these tools is that most online collaboration tools also seem to have at least some project management functionality. Good examples in this respect are Yammer, Tibbr and IBM Connections. Employees can have lengthy discussions on these platforms but are able to switch into a more project management related part of the system if required. In contrast, some of the online project management tools that I’ve looked at seem less geared towards open collaboration.
Some tools in the online collaboration space and what to look out for – Tools that come to mind are: Chatter, Socialtext, Igloo, Jive, Yammer, Confluence, MangoApps and daPulse (see Fig. 1 below). As with any digital application, key things to look out for are (1) ease of use and clean interface design and (2) management of information. With some of the tools that I mentioned above there’s a risk of information overload, with the application becoming one long activity stream. Also, I’ve learned from implementing some of these tools with clients that the more intuitive it is to share and comment on ideas, the higher the uptake of these tools. I like tools such as Yammer and Jive because they are so intuitive and easy to use.
Some tools in the online project management space and what to look out for – When managing projects of any scale and with a number of different people involved, Gantt charts or emails are no longer sufficient in my view. Tools like Asana, Basecamp, Podio, Trello and SocialCast provide private workspaces dedicated to specific projects and make it easier to keep track of project progress and outstanding tasks. Whereas a tool like Yammer is continually strengthening the project management aspect of its application (see Fig. 4 below), I find that Asana, Podio and Basecamp (see Fig. 2/3 below) can really help in assigning tasks as well as understanding the status of a project and its individual milestones. Another aspect to look out for is the secure sharing of documents. Most of the applications I mentioned above do have that capability, but there also platforms out there such as Dropbox and Box that do just that: securing storing and sharing of documents.

Main learning point: having used social and project management tools for a while now, it’s interesting to see an overlap in functionality and in proposition arising between the different tools. Like with most products the main challenge to the user is to be clear what they want get out of a specific tool and to establish whether it can deliver on that expectation. For instance, if one’s end goal is to deliver projects faster, some of the open collaboration solutions might not be appropriate. In contrast, if one likes to collaborate around ideas then the more traditional project management software might not be the way to go.

Fig. 1 – An introduction to daPulse by daPulse

Fig. 2 – How Podio can be used for Project Management by Podio

Fig. 3 – A review of the Basecamp project management functionality by Joel Milne

Fig. 4 – An overview of new Yammer features by Yammer

Related links for further learning:

Learning about the wearable technology space

August 20, 2013September 16, 2013 marcabraham2 Comments

When it comes to wearable technology, quite a lot of us will almost automatically think of Google Glass (and perhaps stop there). However, there are a lot more businesses out there that concentrate on some form of wearable technology. In this post I’ll highlight some good examples which I’ve come across recently:

Jawbone – Jawbone has been building mobile technology products for over a decade. The San Francisco based company is well known for products such as Jambox, the first intelligent wireless speaker (see Fig. 1 below), and its NoiseAssassin® technology, claiming to effectively eliminate all (external) noise.
Memoto – The Memoto “Lifelogging Camera” takes a photo of your life every 30 seconds. It’s a small wearable camera that not only takes a picture, but also captures where and when it was taken (see Fig. 2 below). Once plugged into your computer, all pictures are automatically uploaded onto the Memoto Lifelogging Cloud.”
Melon – Melon is a company which produces the “Melon Headband” and its mission is to “make the invisible activity of your brain visible and understandable.” Melon headbands will become available in 2014, but the Melon founders already claim that the main differentiator of their product – over existing EEG headbands already out there – is that it doesn’t just measure your brainwave activity, it also tries to make it understandable (see Fig. 3 below).
Recon Instruments – Recon Instruments produce wearable products aimed at the sports market. For example, the “Recon Jet” (which will become available in 2014) is presented as “the world’s most advanced wearable computer” and seems clearly aimed at cyclists. Connectivity of the ‘Jet’ to users’ smartphones and and other third party sensors will form a crucial part of this product (see Fig. 4 below).
AirStrip – AirStrip’s main mission is to “drive clinical transformation through mobility” and a good example hereof is its “AirStrip One” product. I struggle to summarise this solution in 1 or 2 sentences but it can probably be best described as a cross-platform tool that lets clinicians enter and access patients’ medical info digitally in a very easy and interconnected way.

Main learning point: Google Glass originally sparked my interest in wearable technology, but I then quickly realised how fast the wearable technology space is growing and how some companies have been in it for a long time already. Think of the aviation industry where pilots have been using wearable technology for decades or the fitness sector where workout armbands have been in fashion for a while now. I was nevertheless fascinated by some of the companies that I looked into and the range of wearable solutions already covered.

Fig. 1 – A short demo of Jawbone’s “Jambox” by VigTheGeek

Fig. 2 – A short introduction to Memoto’s Lifelogging Camera by Slashgear

Fig. 3 – A short introduction to Melon Headbands by Kickstarter

Fig. 4 – A short introduction to the Recon Jet by Recon Instruments

Fig. 5 – Screenshot of the AirStrip ONE solution by AirStrip

Related links for further learning:

Book Review: “Mobile First”

July 27, 2013October 12, 2013 marcabraham1 Comment

“Mobile First” by Luke Wroblewski is a great introduction to designing web experiences that cater for both desktop and mobile devices. With a large number of people accessing the web on their mobile devices, “Mobile First” is all about designing user experiences beyond the confines of the desktop.

Naturally, there’s likely to be overlap between the design of native mobile applications and mobile first or responsive mobile design, where a desktop product is created with the mobile experience at the front of mind. In this book, Wroblewski focuses on creating basic websites which can be easily enhanced for mobile (i.e. smartphone and tablet) and PC. These are the main things I learned from reading “Mobile First”:

Common constraints of Mobile First – The main constraints of designing for a mobile experience are (1) screen size, (2) performance and (3) time and place. The main point that Wroblewski makes with respect to all three constraints is that when designing for mobile one really needs to know his users and his business. It isn’t good enough to simply try and make your existing website work on a mobile phone; Wroblewski argues that “if you design for mobile first, you can create agreement up front on what matters most. You can then apply the same rationale to the desktop (and any other) experience of your web product.” A good example is Flickr’s mobile web experience which reduces 60+ navigation options on the Flickr website to 6 (see Fig. 1 below).
Capabilities of Mobile First – Wroblewski outlines how you can use mobile device capabilities like camera, location detection and accelerometer to innovate (simple) use cases. Mobile opens up numerous new ways to meet people’s needs. However, one shouldn’t overlook browser limitations and the constraints these can impose on your mobile experience! It was also interesting to read about the 3 critical, common mobile interaction types as identified by Josh Clark (author of “Tapworthy”, see Fig. 2) which are reflected in Google’s breakdown of mobile users (see Fig. 3).
Content over navigation – Whereas the more ‘traditional’ websites can be quite navigation heavy, one of the key principles of Mobile First is “content over navigation.” Wroblewski’s main advice is to start the conversation with users through content rather than navigation. YouTube and ESPN’s mobile web experiences are good examples. In both cases, the navigation options have been reduced and simplified (see the example of ESPN in Fig. 4).
Touch and “Going small by going big” – Having touch devices means using your fingers to interact with a site or application! Wroblewski therefore stresses the importance of creating appropriately sized and placed actions (‘touch targets’) to help people tap with confidence and accuracy. As an example, the book mentions Quora’s mobile web login screen as an example of where the key actions are quite small and placed closely together (see Fig. 5) which bears the risk of carrying out the wrong action.
Designing for different mobile devices – I was pleased to see that Wroblewski addresses the design and implementation issues around constantly changing mobile devices, browsers and operating systems. I guess the key point here is that with responsive web design you can set a baseline mobile experience first and adapt your layout as device capabilities change. This tends to be referred to as “fluid layouts” whereby interface elements like search are designed in such a way that they adapt to the space available to them. A good example is the fluid layout used for Google Places which adapts to different screen widths available.

Main learning point: “Mobile First” is an easy to read book on responsive web design. Fortunately, the book doesn’t spend too much talking about the pros and cons of native vs responsive mobile design. Instead, Wroblewski explains the main principles and benefits behind a mobile first design approach, without closing his eyes for some of the potential pitfalls and risks involved. Even though “Mobile First” sometimes gets a bit too technical for my liking, the book does a great job in getting designers and non designers to think more about designing with mobile in mind.

Fig. 1 – Flickr’s mobile web experience

Fig. 2 – Three critical, common mobile interaction types (from: “Tapworthy” by Josh Clark)

1. Micro-tasking

2. “I’m local”

3. “I’m bored”

Fig. 3 – Google’s breakdown of mobile users (as adapted from Timo Elliott’s great blog post)

1. Repetitive now – The user who checks the same piece of information over and over again (e.g. the weather forecast)

2. Urgent now – A request to find something specific fast (e.g. directions to the airport now)

3. Bored now – Users who have time on their hands (e.g. on their commute)

Fig. 4 – ESPN’s mobile web experience, a good example of “content over navigation”

Fig. 5 – Quora’s mobile web login screen where the main actions are quite small and are placed closely together

Related links for further learning:

As I learn …

This site is about everything digital, giving an update on new things as I learn

Category: Uncategorized

Some good conversational UI examples to learn from

Lending revisited: Bond Street

App review: Abra

CarStory and its ways to enhance your car inventory

Learning about the wearable technology space

Book Review: “Mobile First”