Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development by Srini Janarthanam

Build over 8 chatbots and conversational user interfaces with leading tools such as Chatfuel, Dialogflow, Microsoft Bot Framework, Twilio, Alexa Skills, and Google Actions and deploying them on channels like Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa and Google Home

About This Book

• Understand the different use cases of Conversational UIs with this project-based guide
• Build feature-rich Chatbots and deploy them on multiple platforms
• Get real-world examples of voice-enabled UIs for personal and home assistance

Who This Book Is For

This book is for developers who are interested in creating interactive conversational UIs/Chatbots. A basic understanding of JavaScript and web APIs is required.

What You Will Learn

• Design the flow of conversation between the user and the chatbot
• Create Task model chatbots for implementing tasks such as ordering food
• Get new toolkits and services in the chatbot ecosystem
• Integrate third-party information APIs to build interesting chatbots
• Find out how to deploy chatbots on messaging platforms
• Build a chatbot using MS Bot Framework
• See how to tweet, listen to tweets, and respond using a chatbot on Twitter
• Publish chatbots on Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa

In Detail

Conversation as an interface is the best way for machines to interact with us using the universally accepted human tool that is language. Chatbots and voice user interfaces are two flavors of conversational UIs. Chatbots are real-time, data-driven answer engines that talk in natural language and are context-aware. Voice user interfaces are driven by voice and can understand and respond to users using speech. This book covers both types of conversational UIs by leveraging APIs from multiple platforms. We'll take a project-based approach to understand how these UIs are built and the best use cases for deploying them.

We'll start by building a simple messaging bot from the Facebook Messenger API to understand the basics of bot building. Then we move on to creating a Task model that can perform complex tasks such as ordering and planning events with the newly-acquired-by-Google Dialogflow and Microsoft Bot framework.

We then turn to voice-enabled UIs that are capable of interacting with users using speech with Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

By the end of the book, you will have created your own line of chatbots and voice UIs for multiple leading platforms.

Style and approach

This is a practical book, where each chapter focuses on a chatbot project. The chapters take a step-by-step approach to help you build intelligent chatbots that act as personal assistants.