The Fundamentals of NLP Design
For whatever reason, if you’ve decided to ignore my advice and create an NLP chatbot, it is important to understand that they, too, have a structured flow.
Many builders, unfortunately, think that since NLP is all about “determining probabilities” or building a series of “top-level menus” managed by a “self-learning AI engine” that “leverages the new paradigm in data-driven UX” [feel free to insert your own corporate buzzwords here], there is no organized structure for an NLP chatbot.
This simply isn’t true.
The basic design of all successful NLP chatbots has three layers:
- Greeting and general education
- The intents or main executables
- Continuing education plus the exit sequence
Greetings and Education Layer
The greeting part is the simplest. This is where your chatbot says hello to your users. It may, quite literally, be as simple as having your chatbot say, “Howdy!”.
The education part refers to two components:
- Who the bot is
- What the bot can do (overt intents)
I highly recommend having the chatbot introduce itself (by name, if there is one) and then say who it works for.
