Breaking The Fourth Wall In Software
Alex Bunardzic, February 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/alexbunardzichttps://medium.com/@alexbunardzic
Or, Everything Old Is New Again
Early Human-Computer Interfaces
Breakthrough-- Text!
But Computers Are Clunky
Only These People Knew How To Talk To Computers
Replace Text With Graphical Interface:The Desktop Metaphor
Quickly Mushroomed Into Scary GUI:Counter-Intuitive
Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words, But Most Of Those 'Words' Are Gibberish
People Find GUIs Frustrating
GUIs Enforce The ‘One Size Fits All’ Solutions
What If, Instead Of Intermediary Graphics, We Were To Use Plain Text Again?
Yes, But Computers Are Brittle And Will Not Be As Forgiving As GUIs
So GUIs Are The Training Wheels, Crutches And Wheelchairs
Can't Get Far Using Training Wheels
How To Remove Training Wheels And Learn To Ride Properly?
Break The Fourth Wall! (i.e. Stop Pushing Pixels!)
How Can We Do That?
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
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
Guess What? We Just Broke The Fourth Wall In Software!
OK, So What Did Just Happen Here?
We Have Abandoned The GUI And Switched To Plain Text When Interacting With E-Commerce
But At The Same Token, We Didn’t Have To Undergo Any Training
It Was All Made Possible Thanks To Getting In Touch With A Sophisticated Chat Bot
How Do We Get Involved With A Chat Bot Of Our Choice?
We /invite it to our channel
Once Invited, The Bot Is Always Online, Listening For Its Name To Get Mentioned
The Bot Is The Buffer
The Bot Is Attentive To Human Needs And Sensitive To Human Frailty
Is This A Revolutionary Change?
No, Not Really. It’s More Of A Natural Evolution In The Human-Computer Interaction
In Actuality, It’s Not All That Different From GUIs
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
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
Remove The Pixelated Decorations, And What Are You Left With?
What Is Microcopy?
Customer Service-Oriented
Remove Graphical Decorations And You’re Left With A Conversational Thread Between A User
And A Back-end Service
Conversational Commerce
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)
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
On the web, keyword search was the core of the experience
But on mobile, it’s become clear that chat is where people spend most of their time
“We’re just getting people used to the idea that you can message more than just people on Messenger.”
Seth Rosenberg, Facebook Product Manager
The Disappearance Of Flip Phones
The Disappearance Of Phone Numbers
Discussion Threads Are The New Apps
One Stop Shop - Discussion Thread Gives The Context
No Need To Jump Around From One App To Another
Establish Our Very Own Social Handshake
Nothing to install, nothing to configure—just flow
We’re Leaving The World Of Scarcity And Entering The World Of Abundance