5 ms·

But at that point you've reinvented mainframe-like terminal interfaces. "Everything old is new again", but is that good?

by dvdkon 5y ago

iqanq 5y ago
Why change a simple interface that works?
hakfoo 5y ago
Yes. Every "natural language" system, whether it's a text chatbot or Siri-style voice bot, is essentially a command-line interface without very good documentation. In general, it was considered an advancement over the classic CLI (at least for environments where there's low expected user proficiency) to provide a menu of valid choices and put them front and centre. Most customer service scenarios are exactly that-- low user proficiency (in company- or business-specific terminology, or sometimes even the very transaction flow itself) so they may not be able to quite enunciate exactly what they mean, but can easily pick from a clearly written menu.
Out_of_Characte 5y ago
Whatsapp is less scary than the command line.
anonymouse008 5y ago
The whole - 'what do you believe that other people don't' The public can 100% manage and love terminal interfaces... as long as it looks like a text message.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  I've come full circle on that using voice assistants. Y'know - when you're a kid "terminal interfaces are bad, guis are great". When you get older and learn "Terminal interfaces are good for compsability and piping, they're great." Then you start developing software for users and learn "terminal interfaces have poor discoverability, GUIs present them their options in clear, informative ways". Then the promise of natural-language processing appears and it's "terminal interfaces are great, you don't have to be perfectly precise any more". Now, with my google assistant? Text interfaces are awful, because I have no idea what combination of magic words will confuse it. What will be interpreted as a parameter to which command. Even simple commands get broken if I accidentally add phrasing where it interprets it as a different command... usually just giving up with "I don't know how to do that" and then Google gets a nice recording of elaborate cusswords.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    You probably can't do this with google (rhasspy on the other hand...), but what is really needed is every-time someone tries something that doesn't work they go program the response that would have been correct. I think speech recognition is good enough for this, but what is left is making a complex tree. See the 20 questions game where because so many people have put in new answers it now can guess almost everything after just a few questions. This is not easy and it takes a lot of effort to figure out where things didn't work and fix it so it will for the next person. At least some of those things you fix will never be asked again, but you need to do it. Part of the above is speech recognition needs to expose a confidence and if it thinks it knows ask useful questions about what you mean. (they already do in some cases)
korse 5y ago
After years of unsuccessfully trying to get people to use modern GUI based software, I had a minor yolo moment and replaced an entire factory worth of employee facing software with a text-mode curses interface. No mouse support, company banner using ASCII art, interface in multiple languages that you toggle with a control key etc. All instances are concurrent user sessions on a linux VM in the cloud, it runs faster than anything we've paid for and no one will entertain the idea of going back. Not saying this is a typical situation and we're only talking a couple hundred daily users, but still, food for thought.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  Can you provide more details on the use cases/workflows, the users etc? I could be suffering from confirmation bias, but I've assumed this would work in many places.
JamisonM 5y ago
These interfaces are good because they are asynchronous, all the good things about old-timey terminal stuff but without the session overhead badness. If I message back and forth with a bot in a way that accomplishes a goal over a longer period of time but doesn't depend on me maintaining my attention, phone line, internet connection, or browser state for that entire period of time then in many cases it is a superior experience. This is why I love chat-with-a-human interfaces on websites for support (although they mostly require maintaining browser state) because staying on a phone line absolutely sucks and the person helping you also doesn't have a real-time constraint so they often have the ability to get you better answers to hard questions.

But at that point you've reinvented mainframe-like terminal interfaces. "Everything old is new again", but is that good?

by dvdkon 5y ago

But at that point you've reinvented mainframe-like terminal interfaces. "Everything old is new again", but is that good?

iqanq 5y ago

Why change a simple interface that works?

hakfoo 5y ago

Yes. Every "natural language" system, whether it's a text chatbot or Siri-style voice bot, is essentially a command-line interface without very good documentation. In general, it was considered an advancement over the classic CLI (at least for environments where there's low expected user proficiency) to provide a menu of valid choices and put them front and centre. Most customer service scenarios are exactly that-- low user proficiency (in company- or business-specific terminology, or sometimes even the very transaction flow itself) so they may not be able to quite enunciate exactly what they mean, but can easily pick from a clearly written menu.

Out_of_Characte 5y ago

Whatsapp is less scary than the command line.

anonymouse008 5y ago

The whole - 'what do you believe that other people don't' The public can 100% manage and love terminal interfaces... as long as it looks like a text message.

Pxtl 5y ago
I've come full circle on that using voice assistants. Y'know - when you're a kid "terminal interfaces are bad, guis are great". When you get older and learn "Terminal interfaces are good for compsability and piping, they're great." Then you start developing software for users and learn "terminal interfaces have poor discoverability, GUIs present them their options in clear, informative ways". Then the promise of natural-language processing appears and it's "terminal interfaces are great, you don't have to be perfectly precise any more". Now, with my google assistant? Text interfaces are awful, because I have no idea what combination of magic words will confuse it. What will be interpreted as a parameter to which command. Even simple commands get broken if I accidentally add phrasing where it interprets it as a different command... usually just giving up with "I don't know how to do that" and then Google gets a nice recording of elaborate cusswords.
- bluGill 5y ago
  You probably can't do this with google (rhasspy on the other hand...), but what is really needed is every-time someone tries something that doesn't work they go program the response that would have been correct. I think speech recognition is good enough for this, but what is left is making a complex tree. See the 20 questions game where because so many people have put in new answers it now can guess almost everything after just a few questions. This is not easy and it takes a lot of effort to figure out where things didn't work and fix it so it will for the next person. At least some of those things you fix will never be asked again, but you need to do it. Part of the above is speech recognition needs to expose a confidence and if it thinks it knows ask useful questions about what you mean. (they already do in some cases)

korse 5y ago

After years of unsuccessfully trying to get people to use modern GUI based software, I had a minor yolo moment and replaced an entire factory worth of employee facing software with a text-mode curses interface. No mouse support, company banner using ASCII art, interface in multiple languages that you toggle with a control key etc. All instances are concurrent user sessions on a linux VM in the cloud, it runs faster than anything we've paid for and no one will entertain the idea of going back. Not saying this is a typical situation and we're only talking a couple hundred daily users, but still, food for thought.

danielmarkbruce 5y ago
Can you provide more details on the use cases/workflows, the users etc? I could be suffering from confirmation bias, but I've assumed this would work in many places.

JamisonM 5y ago

These interfaces are good because they are asynchronous, all the good things about old-timey terminal stuff but without the session overhead badness. If I message back and forth with a bot in a way that accomplishes a goal over a longer period of time but doesn't depend on me maintaining my attention, phone line, internet connection, or browser state for that entire period of time then in many cases it is a superior experience. This is why I love chat-with-a-human interfaces on websites for support (although they mostly require maintaining browser state) because staying on a phone line absolutely sucks and the person helping you also doesn't have a real-time constraint so they often have the ability to get you better answers to hard questions.