Breaking the Fourth Wall in Software
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The document discusses the evolution of human-computer interaction, advocating for a return to text-based interfaces over graphical user interfaces (GUIs) as a means to simplify user experience. It highlights how chatbots facilitate this by handling inquiries directly through text, thereby removing the frustrations associated with navigating complex GUIs. Ultimately, the author suggests that this shift represents a natural progression towards more intuitive and conversational commerce experiences.
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Breaking the Fourth Wall in Software
- 1. Breaking The Fourth Wall In Software Alex Bunardzic, February 24, 2016 https://twitter.com/alexbunardzic https://medium.com/@alexbunardzic
- 2. Or, Everything Old Is New Again
- 5. Intimidating
- 6. Clunky
- 9. But Computers Are Clunky
- 10. Only These People Knew How To Talk To Computers
- 11. Replace Text With Graphical Interface: The Desktop Metaphor
- 12. Quickly Mushroomed Into Scary GUI: Counter-Intuitive
- 13. Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words, But Most Of Those 'Words' Are Gibberish
- 14. People Find GUIs Frustrating
- 15. GUIs Enforce The ‘One Size Fits All’ Solutions
- 16. What If, Instead Of Intermediary Graphics, We Were To Use Plain Text Again?
- 17. Yes, But Computers Are Brittle And Will Not Be As Forgiving As GUIs
- 18. So GUIs Are The Training Wheels, Crutches And Wheelchairs
- 19. Can't Get Far Using Training Wheels
- 20. How To Remove Training Wheels And Learn To Ride Properly?
- 21. Break The Fourth Wall! (i.e. Stop Pushing Pixels!)
- 22. How Can We Do That?
- 23. Example • Say we order something online • The next week we may be wondering about the status of our order (hasn’t arrived yet) • We open a browser, go to the online store, log in, try to navigate to the order status page • We have to wade through the jungle of confusing menus, layouts, links etc. that keep changing constantly
- 24. Less Frustrating Example • What if, instead of doing all of the above gymnastics, we just do the following • Go to the command line (Messenger or Slack etc.) and type: • ‘@merchant_name what’s the status of my order?’ • Let the merchant service (i.e. Amazon or Etsy etc.) do the legwork for us
- 25. Guess What? We Just Broke The Fourth Wall In Software!
- 26. OK, So What Did Just Happen Here?
- 27. We Have Abandoned The GUI And Switched To Plain Text When Interacting With E-Commerce
- 28. But At The Same Token, We Didn’t Have To Undergo Any Training
- 29. It Was All Made Possible Thanks To Getting In Touch With A Sophisticated Chat Bot
- 30. How Do We Get Involved With A Chat Bot Of Our Choice?
- 31. We /invite it to our channel
- 32. Once Invited, The Bot Is Always Online, Listening For Its Name To Get Mentioned
- 33. The Bot Is The Buffer
- 34. The Bot Is Attentive To Human Needs And Sensitive To Human Frailty
- 35. Is This A Revolutionary Change?
- 36. No, Not Really. It’s More Of A Natural Evolution In The Human- Computer Interaction
- 37. In Actuality, It’s Not All That Different From GUIs
- 38. Funny, Ha?
- 39. Let’s Examine What Goes On In A Typical GUI Interface • A user is presented with an Input field on the form • This Input field is sometimes referred to as a Text Box • The GUI listens to the user’s gestures and catches the ‘send’ or ‘submit’ gesture • The GUI then sends text to the back end service layer
- 40. So GUIs Are Also Text-Driven • Where do pixels come into play? • They’re being used as mere decoration • Often times pixels are used to sugar-coat the web form and present it in a more familiar context • Typically, emulating a paper form • Plus, it gives graphic designers the chance to show off their chops
- 41. Remove The Pixelated Decorations, And What Are You Left With?
- 42. Microcopy
- 45. Remove Graphical Decorations And You’re Left With A Conversational Thread Between A User And A Back- end Service
- 47. What Are The Advantages Of Conversational Interfaces? • Intuitive • Sensitive to human frailty (the bot will try to clarify its master’s requests if at first not understood) • Familiar (everyone’s already fully accustomed to chatting with family/friends/coworkers) • Consistent experience across all possible devices • Forever recorded in the fully personalized discussion thread (full auditability)
- 48. Conversational Interface Offers Experience Uncannily Similar To Everyday Customer Support • What does typically happen when calling customer support and not being able to resolve the issue? • The issue gets escalated to the supervisor • Same thing happens with chatbots • When in doubt, they escalate the question/issue to human customer support workforce
- 49. Trends
- 52. On the web, keyword search was the core of the experience
- 53. But on mobile, it’s become clear that chat is where people spend most of their time
- 54. “We’re just getting people used to the idea that you can message more than just people on Messenger.” Seth Rosenberg, Facebook Product Manager
- 55. The Disappearance Of Flip Phones
- 56. The Disappearance Of Phone Numbers
- 57. Discussion Threads Are The New Apps
- 58. One Stop Shop - Discussion Thread Gives The Context
- 59. No Need To Jump Around From One App To Another
- 60. Establish Our Very Own Social Handshake
- 61. Nothing to install, nothing to configure—just flow
- 62. Conclusion
- 63. We’re Leaving The World Of Scarcity And Entering The World Of Abundance