Branding the Bot: Considerations and Lessons Learned
How do you brand something that lives inside a chat bubble? How do you make something stand out, that is supposed to get out of the way as much as possible? We recently were approached by a small startup from Berlin to create the visual identity for their new Facebook Messenger bot.
Gabby Lord, who worked on the project here at A Color Bright, put together some thoughts and considerations around the topic.
This new era of conversational UI might still be in its early stages. But with more and more companies entering the marketplace and new bots being created every day, branding plays an integral role in standing out from the crowd. This obviously applies to more than bots. However, it’s important to acknowledge that they are special situations, and the design approach should reflect that.
We recently were asked to brand a chat service called Job Pal, a Facebook Messenger bot from Berlin-based startup Mihiro. One thing was clear from the start: What Job Pal needed was a minimum viable brand for what is essentially a minimum viable product. They wanted to be able to move quickly and iterate easily. Much like the service, the visuals should be adaptable and relevant for what Job Pal is initially setting out to achieve.
Overall, sticking to a minimum viable brand can be tough. It’s easy to fall into the design rabbit hole and want to create an epic system to take the world by storm. But in the case of bots especially, because the touch points are so limited, it’s important to start where the brand interaction takes place and design outwards, opposed to the other way around.
Naming
When naming your bot, you need to approach it from a discoverability point of view. Right now it is still unclear as to how bots will be found within Facebook Messenger, however it’s probably not bold to assume there will be some kind of ‘App Store’ equivalent. Discoverability is key, especially when a destination to search for bots eventually exists. Names that contain keywords and are self-descriptive will likely end up playing to your advantage.
Tone of Voice
As bots usually live within an existing platform and brand interaction is almost solely through conversation, tone of voice is more important than ever when forming their brand personality. The overall challenge is therefore applying visual attributes to what is primarily a vocal identity. Of course bots don’t have the ability to mimic human behaviour naturally enough (yet) for it to seem like a real person. But that’s not to say an interaction can’t be helpful or invoke a certain tone.
Key Attributes
Define what key attributes your bot has and how they can be expressed visually. The word ‘pal’ for example is defined as a friend or form of friendship, so naturally ‘friendly’ was an important attribute to consider when branding Job Pal. Others included light-hearted, trustworthy, valuable, supportive and humble. We wanted Pal to be seen as a buddy, as well as a respected confidant.
Establishing a common ground between all parties involved is required to align on what certain words mean to each person. How one person interprets the attribute ‘honest’, might be completely different to another. Defining this early on saves a lot of headache down the line and provides a solid foundation to start with. We usually do this by creating mood boards so there is something tangible to comment on.
Applications
Realistically assess where the brand you’re creating is going to live, as the applications can then inform the visuals. For chat bots, these touchpoints are few and usually consist of a landing page, messenger platform profile, social media assets and advertisements.
Brand Elements
Therefore, we narrowed possible design elements down to three main categories: characters, action symbols and logos.
Characters have proven popular in the market. This is when a bot takes the appearance of a person, animal, creature or something “human-like”. An example of this would be Poncho, a weather app that manifests in the form of a cat.
Action symbols are when a bot is represented by a gesture or verb of some description. For example, Go Butler uses an icon with two hands, implying the action of service, while Assist uses two overlapping keys, a symbol for unlocking information and gaining access.
Thirdly, there is the option to use a standard logo, which is generally what larger companies and corporate entities have opted for: News bots such as CNN have simply applied their existing logo to the Messenger platform. Something like this works in some but not all cases.
In the case of Job Pal, there was potential in each of these categories. We wanted to achieve gender neutrality however, and felt this would be difficult using a person or character. We progressed with an action symbol and brainstormed different ways we usually communicate with our ‘pals’.
Emojis immediately seemed appropriate as a brand element that can be applied within conversations and also isn’t platform-specific. In other words, the brand could transcend the icon and actually come to life in the conversation, within any chat platform.
Through establishing all these elements, the actual designing and visual direction of your bot should become very clear. You can draw inspiration from the tone of voice and key attributes, create boundaries from the applications, and know how to position and communicate the brand.
A brand is a dialogue, with bots more so than ever. How your service is perceived will be shaped by that dialogue first and foremost. Any visual direction should be developed based on this fact.
