A cross between a form interface and a MUD client

So spitballing here.

Right now, we have a chat interface and a form interface. The form interface is really nice for guiding users to provide structured inputs, but of course the chat interface is really nice for nice improvisational conversations.

What if there was a middle ground where within a chat interface, buttons kept popping up simplifying the user decisions. They may still type out an answer, but they could also choose any button in the menu. I see this in some customer service bots around the web, where the bot is tightly orchestrated to ask what kind of problems a user has, or if the user is satisfied with the answer, but instead of typing into a text-field, they get button-options for satisfaction level or the main types of problems (“returns”, “updates”, etc). The buttons could look just like the icebreaker buttons we have for chat interfaces.

So if you follow what I’m saying, this is basically bridging bots and “voicemail menu systems” which creates a flow in the conversation… maybe this triggers also Pickaxe-to-Pickaxe handovers via Actions.

I like that, it guides the user through a series of questions maybe, and it doesn’t seem as monotonous as a giant form, could even have custom questions based off of the responses. Seems cool!

1 Like