Mobile Virtual Agents and Interactive Characters
Nice perspective from Barcelona, as well as projections for the market:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/29/innovative-mobile-ads-grab-attention-in-barcelona/
What’s nice to see is that some “uniquely mobile” experiences are coming to light – beyond porting static web engagement – but, really thinking about the User Experience on mobile.
The future’s so bright. . .
Over at our subsidiary mLearning venture: http://eslAI.com, the first release of our Ver. 1.2 of the platform’s enhanced UI is now available to kick tires and also LISTEN to the sound of tires being kicked!
We’ve added pre-recorded Audio to the applications which is cross-browser and cross-device compatible (OK, there are some lingering platforms we’re still tweaking to achieve playback on), but, in general, most mobile devices are testing Positive (Android, iOS, Windows/Mobile).
Where this gets really interesting on the mobile marketing and mobile entertainment front is where we extend this to be a Sound design and audio story design to accompany the interactive text chat. We love sound FX. Now we can add them into the chat.
At some point we’ll also incorporate text-to-speech, but the upside of pre-recorded audio is that it carries more emotion and style to it. So, not all segments of the ESL apps (where there is personalization) include audio; but, an awful lot of them do (nearly 100 clips are included in ESL1)
Easy listening…
It was nice to see Portland, OR host last evenings talk:
Jared Spool Presents: Mobile & UX – Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm – Portland, OR
Last night at the UoO building in Old Town.
We’ll post Links to his Deck when it’s available (Now available Here).
He’s been giving this talk for the past year, and a video is here: http://vimeo.com/25547105
While there were 4x elements in Spool’s presentation that create this “perfect storm,” the over-riding metaphor for much of the presentation was a SIX FLAGS v. DISNEYLAND: ”activity” v. “experience” paradigm.
Basically, SIX FLAGS offers a pretty straight forward activity-based flow, while DISNEY’s design encourages a more “experiential” flow for the End User. The parallel was basically how online web sites are data/feature driven, while mobile (when successful) is more experience driven.
The natural extension of this, while not discussed, seems to us to be how a DISNEY-experience is “personal,” while a SIX FLAGS-activity laden day is more generic (everyone has nearly the same experience).
One slide in the presentation Deck were pictures of the origami towels that magically appear in someone’s “resort room” at the end of the day — sometimes surrounded by the visitor’s children’s toys (Toy Story with Origami towels).
The illusion is that this is a deeply personalized, memorable touch (even if 20,000 other rooms are nearly the same), in part, by adding the visitor’s toys to the tableau does make it “personal.”
Let’s extend this to “mobile thinking and UX.”
Mobile is a far more “personal” engagement format than “online.”
It’s in someone’s pocket, purse or bag. It’s in someone’s hand. It’s a one-to-one EXTREME CLOSE UP engagement.
It’s not just “experiential.”
It’s personal.
And, the UX, along with the programming, needs to fulfill “personal” engagement — Whether that is through deeply complex algorithms or smoke-and-mirrors fancy tricks (User’s will suspend disbelief and go along for the ride if you do it well), “personalization” of mobile experiences is what delivers:
Delight.
Which was another theme of the evening.
The contentAI studios conversational mobile platform is predicated on personalizing each and every engagement. Sometimes deeply, sometimes lightly. But, it’s been a Prime Directive in the development of the platform since our focus went to Mobile, nearly 2 years ago.
We’ve been thinking about personalized mobile experiences for a long time. Which is why the idea of putting someone’s children’s toys around a bunch of origami creature shaped towels, resonated so deeply.
While we’ve been quietly going through Beta releases and testing “virtual brand agents” and “mobile characters” over the past year, it’s been fascinating to see how the press has latched onto the “generalist” mobile virtual assistant attempts (also, to be fair, in Beta).
Obviously, SIRI was the big one. Lots of press and very slick ads. Now, along comes MAJEL: http://technomondo.com/2011/12/14/google-working-on-its-siri-competitor-codenamed-majel-for-android/
It’s really important to differentiate between a “generalist” which can access finite data sources and act on them (e.g. send an SMS, register an appointment in your calendar), and a “virtual brand agent” who has a specific “voice” (even if text based) and knowledge specific to the Brand as well as a personalized engagement with the User.
At contentAI, we don’t build “generalists.” The “one bot to rule them all” just isn’t as interesting as building virtual characters who are unique to a Brand or user experience.
There’s plenty of room for many mobile virtual assistants and characters – But, there will never be, on our lifetime, one bot to rule them all. We do find it interesting that much of the “pleasure” people derive from SIRI is that it has some level of “personality,” beyond data retrieval. People enjoy personable virtual characters…2012 looks like a very busy year…
Nice story over in GigaOM today:
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/07/interactive-ebooks-take-on-fiction-novels/
While our interactive narrative is a unique branch of “interactive fiction,” seeing this as an emerging topic is terrific.
We are releasing the 2001 MySantaTalk mobile web (and some native app versions) tomorrow!
The URL: http://m.MySantaTalk.com will redirect to the new app as soon as it’s “live.”
Our new UI is featured — While the UI is still undergoing upgrades and responsive design enhancements, this is a true Ver. 1.0 release as we move out of Beta.
We’re looking forward to the “App of the Week” status from our friends at INTEL’s AppUP…We’ll post links there next week too.
Have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season.
And, have a chat with Santa while you’re out and about, from your mobile!
Oh, right, yes, all of our web properties are undergoing a makeover the next few days…so, that’s our final year-end clean up…
See you at CES?
Nice article and fabulous screenshot (gee, shopGirl looks familiar in her new interface!), even if we weren’t specifically mentioned!
Yes, that’s a preview of the new UI…though, it’s evolved a bit since that prototype…
It is great to see the “personal digital assistant” hype go into full gear this past week with Apple’s inclusion of SIRI at the OS level.
SIRI is a smart technology. After all, it’s $150 million of taxpayer funded DARPA research. Even if it’s a bit dated.
Apple was very smart to integrate SIRI within the REALLY IMPORTANT embedded communication apps on the iPhone 4S — The previous “app version” of SIRI could barely handle integration with six APIs and could draw upon very limited data pools to get you a Taxi or a Restaurant reservation (from within it’s limited list). The illusion of intelligence continues with it’s access to Wikipedia headlines (an old chatbot trick), but it feels intuitive, which is important.
The real issue comes with “cross talk,” where an AI engine cannot parse between similar phrases or words that have different meanings. i.e. “I need to find Sam Adams.” Are we talking about the beer, the mayor of Portland, an historical reference or a friend with that name?
What’s the solution?
AI-based virtual agents that are tailored for a specific set of data; brand information and narrow-focused engagement; i.e. one agent per application. The dream of having a single agent who can access data from dozens of apps simply isn’t in the cards, not in the near future.
So, create a personal agent for each application. For each mobile brand engagement. It’s quick. It’s affordable. It’s what we do.
Of course, we do really enjoy seeing the enthusiasm for virtual agents that SIRI has brought to the forefront. For that alone, SIRI is a wonderful thing.
ASIDE: Let’s not forget, the voice recognition feature is from NUANCE, not SIRI. We can integrate with cloud based voice recognition platforms very easily. But, we’re wary of the issues these systems still confound us with, where a 10% failure rate can create incomprehensible user input. People type on their phones all day long. It’s the #1 form of written communication in the World. It’s private. It’s quiet. We still like typed conversations.
While the study was small in scope, the take-away from the New York Times article here
Addresses not just an “addictive” nature to mobile engagement – But it goes further — To a “love” of our mobile devices.
The subjects’ brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member.
Virtual characters and agents designed for mobile engagement fulfill the 2-way communication needs associated with the devices — the raison d’etre they have evolved to evoke such deep emotion. We’re 99.9% certain that this “love” has not come into being due to GPS sensors, mobile banner ads or even “push” notifications.
To fulfill and make “love last,” emotionally compelling mobile content experiences matter!
I’d posit that mobile devices have evolved to evoke “love” because they’ve become our most important communication channel with friends and family (other than face-to-face).
While the article focused on iPhone users and implies that it is a more “loved” device than others, we’d challenge that assertion and suspect it is a cross-device phenomenon. Simply, iPhone users like to express their affection a little louder than the rest of us!
For those in the mobile content business, we hope the take-away here is that to keep the love flowing, you’ve got to deliver emotionally rewarding content – not just click-throughs — this is NOT the static web.
CAVEAT: Some really smart people have taken issue with the study (not just the thinness, but detail level) and that should be noted: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2011/10/01/the-new-york-times-blows-it-big-time-on-brain-imaging/
While the technical aspects are worth questioning, the underlying notion that mobile devices are held to be extremely personal by their owners remains fairly solid. Just try taking one away from someone…or, see how they fare when they lose their device? It doesn’t take an MRI to tell you that you are touching on emotions, not just rational thought.
One of the early players in the “virtual agent” business was VirtuOZ, we have not seen them venture into mobile (though they’ve talked about it); and our interactive narrative engagement solution differs from their engine in other key respects (contentAI was designed specifically for mobile, contextual and personalized engagement, not static web).
That said, we like the work VirtuOZ do — And, we really like the perspective they offered in a Guest Post on VentureBeat:
The projected 400% increase in virtual agents by 2014 could be low (though it’s a great number, as is); but, we’d include our Mobile FAQ product in this category; and that form of application alone could drive greater adoption of IVAs on the “mobile side” of the web specific to individual products and intelligent packaging as mobile web use increases.
There’s an amusing story in Venturebeat today about how virtual agents get “hit on” frequently:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/26/virtual-customer-service-agents-are-constantly-getting-hit-on/
The focus of the story is on the VirtuOZ animated characters and their “looks.” What’s fascinating is that we see this exact same behavior from a certain percentage of Users with text-only engagement. We think it’s because our “characters” are well drawn through words alone!
This was an obvious issue back during our early development – We created a zone called “backstory,” so that each virtual character would be able to engage on a more personal level, yet control the situation. So, yes, you can ask our virtual agents on a date, their favorite movies and a range of other topics (though, there are child safe filters in place for most agents).
With mobile engagement, we find that this level of personalization is what is absolutely necessary to create memorable and successful consumer engagements.
So, sure, ask away…you never know what you may find out about someone!
ContentAI studios delivers a PLATFORM AND A SERVICE producing conversational mobile marketing, entertainment and mLearning experiences.
Learn More in depth info about ContentAI Studios and our unique process.
© 2012 · zyntroPICS Inc. All Rights Reserved.