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I've often argued chatbots are much worse than an FAQ. With proper structure, like you say, it can be easy to see what is and isn't covered, and for things that

I've often argued chatbots are much worse than an FAQ. With proper structure, like you say, it can be easy to see what is and isn't covered, and for things that are included, look up the answer. A chatbot is like an inefficient front end on an FAQ, you have to guess what they might be able to do, and guess what might trigger them to understand you. Best case scenario, you get the chatbot to provide you with a "help" response that's basically the FAQ. A simple list of options will always beat a "conversational interface" to a list of potential back-end actions. Incidentally, I think this gets obscured a but when dealing with businesses whose goal is to confuse or frustrate you into not taking action. If you look at Amazon or Uber's FAQ, they are designed to take you in circles and prevent you from getting any recourse or talking to a person. Chatbots could be helpful for this application

dangero 5y ago
yes chat bot interface discoverability is terrible -- in fact it feels like the system you would design if the intended goal was to intentionally obscure the interface surface while still allowing access to it One logical reason for obscuring the real interface is to make the interface appear more robust than it actually is, so pure marketing, but outside of that I'm not sure what the value is. similar to home assistants Siri/Alexa/Google where 99% of the creative things you try don't work so you end up with just using it to set timers and play music
solveit 5y ago
You are correct for people who can skim a few pages of information, identify what is relevant (possibly spread out across several chunks), and synthesize the information into what they need. For most people on HN, this is as natural as breathing air. For a significant portion of the entire population, this is a pretty daunting task. If you're the kind of person who, like me, is frustrated that everything is a twenty-minute Youtube video tutorial instead of five paragraphs of text, then you may not fully understand the median user of many services.
- mercutio2 5y ago
  I have never heard this particular juxtaposition (YouTube link?!? Why!!!). But I'll note that I have extremely effective-at-reading-and-synthesizing friends who enjoy watching/listening to YouTube, so it may not be a complete explanation for the nefarious spread of horribly inefficient videos that should've been text.

dangero 5y ago

yes chat bot interface discoverability is terrible -- in fact it feels like the system you would design if the intended goal was to intentionally obscure the interface surface while still allowing access to it One logical reason for obscuring the real interface is to make the interface appear more robust than it actually is, so pure marketing, but outside of that I'm not sure what the value is. similar to home assistants Siri/Alexa/Google where 99% of the creative things you try don't work so you end up with just using it to set timers and play music

solveit 5y ago

You are correct for people who can skim a few pages of information, identify what is relevant (possibly spread out across several chunks), and synthesize the information into what they need. For most people on HN, this is as natural as breathing air. For a significant portion of the entire population, this is a pretty daunting task. If you're the kind of person who, like me, is frustrated that everything is a twenty-minute Youtube video tutorial instead of five paragraphs of text, then you may not fully understand the median user of many services.

mercutio2 5y ago
I have never heard this particular juxtaposition (YouTube link?!? Why!!!). But I'll note that I have extremely effective-at-reading-and-synthesizing friends who enjoy watching/listening to YouTube, so it may not be a complete explanation for the nefarious spread of horribly inefficient videos that should've been text.