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© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Preston So • 30 Apr 2018 • Acquia webinar
Alexa, Ask GeorgiaGov
Better citizen engagement with
Amazon Echo and Drupal
+
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Preston So has been a web developer and designer since 2001, a creative
professional since 2004, and a Drupal developer since 2007. As Director of
Research and Innovation at Acquia, Preston leads new open-source and
research initiatives and helms Acquia Labs, the innovation lab featured in
international press.
Previously, Preston contributed to the Spark initiative in the Drupal project,
co-founded the Southern Colorado Drupal User Group in 2008, and operated
an award-winning freelance web and print design studio. Preston has
presented keynotes at conferences on four continents in multiple languages.
preston.so@acquia.com • @prestonso • #askgagovacquia
Welcome!
© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
We're Acquia's innovation lab — a small team of
generalist engineers building co-funded projects
that push the envelope in emerging technologies.
Have forward-looking ideas but need expertise?
Acquia Labs is your innovation partner.
Drupal. JavaScript. Future.
Keynotes. Sessions. Sprints.
A different kind of Drupal conference.
Mark your calendar and prep your proposal!
Follow @decoupleddays on Twitter.
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Inclusion and access to state government information
– What is Ask GeorgiaGov?
– Ask GeorgiaGov product strategy
– How Ask GeorgiaGov works
– Conversational content strategy and usability
– Open discussion
What we'll cover
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Inclusion and access to
state government information
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Connecting citizens with information
– Users like to be independent
– Technology development is breaking norms
– Content reinvented
– Accessible content
GeorgiaGov and innovation
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Innovation as a byproduct
– Mobile to CUI
– Content-driven experience
– Pages to conversations
– Put citizens in control
GeorgiaGov and innovation
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
What is
Ask GeorgiaGov?
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Getting information to citizens faster. Save the phone wait
times and the lines at agency offices; ask Georgia questions
from the comfort of your home.
– Widening access to information. Accessibility of content
and inclusive information in citizen engagement.
– Upholding the spirit of open-source innovation. If you use
an open-source foundation, you should give some of your
work back to the ecosystem.
Value propositions
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Ask GeorgiaGov
Ask GeorgiaGov is a new Alexa skill which gives citizens of
the state of Georgia answers to questions about popular state
government topics such as how to renew a driver's license,
how to register to vote, how to enroll your child in pre-K
programs, and even who Georgia's governor is.
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Ask GeorgiaGov
product strategy
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Build toward a single source of truth
– Meet users where they are, regardless of ability or
socioeconomic status
– Leverage open source wherever possible
GeorgiaGov product strategy
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Extending GeorgiaGov popular
topics with Alexa
Existing content written to make common questions
about government services easy to access.
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Extending GeorgiaGov popular topics with Alexa
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
How AskGeorgiaGov
works
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Extends Alexa’s baseline capability
– An Alexa Skill is defined by:
– Intents
– Utterances
– Slots
– Captures the user’s speech in a useful form and passes
it on to an Endpoint
Alexa skills
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– An operation or request that will be initiated by the
user in a conversation
– Quite literally, the intent the user holds when speaking
Intents
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Example phrases that help the Alexa service “learn”
what to expect from users
– Trigger an Intent when Alexa hears them
– Can contain Slots within the phrase
Utterances
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Describe variable data that Alexa will capture within an
utterance:
– Date
– City name
– Color
– Car model
Slots
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
HailCab I want a cab now
HailCab Call me a cab
HailLater I need a cab at {TIME}
HailLater Send me a cab in {DURATION}
Bringing it all together
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Defines Intents and Utterances for:
– Getting a user’s question
– Finding out if the user wants related information
– Getting a phone number the user can call
– Passes info to the GeorgiaGov website (Endpoint)
Ask GeorgiaGov Alexa skill
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Receives user questions from Alexa as Slot data
– Performs a search against indexed site content
Custom handler module on GeorgiaGov
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Manages the multistep conversation flow:
Custom handler module on GeorgiaGov
Topic
Related
Info
Phone
Number
© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Demo
Alexa, ask GeorgiaGov
© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Alexa, ask GeorgiaGov
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Conversational content
strategy and usability
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Conversational content
– Single, brief thoughts
– Zero UI, aural
– Link- and reference-poor
– Low verbosity tolerance
Web-based vs. conversational content
Web-based content
– Predominantly prose
– Screen-based, visual
– Link- and reference-rich
– High verbosity tolerance
Link Link
LinkLinkLink
Intent
IntentIntent
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Information architecture
requires more unidirectional,
guided flows for accessing and
navigating content
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Content strategy
for web-based experiences
should not be applied as-is to
conversational content
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– For this project, we established two criteria for the
eventual editorial experience:
– The editorial workflow of the Georgia editorial staff
will not be burdened by the addition of
conversational content.
– Editing a piece of web-based content and
conversational content should be indistinguishable.
Conversational content criteria
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Topics
– Questions
– Links in questions
– Affiliated agencies
(phone number)
Conversational content audit
We then performed a
comprehensive
conversational content
audit of the entirety of the
site's content.
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Conversational legibility
Is this content understandable
to a listener rather than a
reader?
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Content discoverability
Is this content accessible to a
listener using a more
unidirectional decision flow
rather than link-rich pages?
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Making content less contextually specific
How long can I receive
unemployment benefits?
How long can I receive benefits?
Are unemployment benefits taxable?
Are benefits taxable?
Original
New
Original
New
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Calls to action and link-rich text
The Social Security Administration
can help you learn how to change
your name on your Social Security
card.
Learn how to change your name on
your Social Security card.
You can receive payments through
either a debit card or direct deposit.
You can receive payments through
either a debit card or direct deposit.
Learn more about payments.
Original
New
Original
New
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Calls to action and link-rich text
In Georgia, the Family Support Registry typically pulls payments directly from
your paycheck. However, you can send your own payments online through
your bank account, your credit card, or Western Union. You may also send your
payments by mail to the address provided in your court order.
Read more about this.
Original
New
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– Conversational usability is an unexplored and less-
understood area in usability because it is solely aural,
not visual or physical like typical interfaces.
– Usability testing cannot be undertaken in the traditional
way in conversational use cases.
– No eye-tracking
– No think-aloud
Conversational usability
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– The project team adopted the retrospective probing
(RP) approach.
– Think-aloud and concurrent probing (CP) in the
conversational context doesn't work when Alexa
intents are easily invoked.
– RP allows for the conversational experience to be
uninfluenced and for the collection of retrospective
data.
Conversational usability
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Conversational usability testing
You have a business license in
Georgia, but you're not sure if you
have to register on an annual basis.
Talk with Alexa to find out the
information you need. At the end,
ask for a phone number for more
information.
You've just moved to Georgia and
you know you need to transfer your
driver’s license, but you're not sure
what to do. Talk with Alexa to find
out the information you need. At the
end, ask for a phone number for
more information.
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– 79.2% success rate on all interactions
– 71.2% of all interactions led to agency phone number being
provided
– Most popular keywords: vehicle registration, driver's licenses, state
sales tax
– Featured in Georgia Public Broadcasting segment
– To be featured at VOICE Summit in Newark, first conference
dedicated to Amazon Alexa
Eight months later ...
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
– drupal.org/project/alexa
– drupal.org/project/alexa/releases/7.x-1.x-dev
– drupal.org/project/alexa/releases/8.x-1.x-dev
– github.com/jakubsuchy/amazon-alexa-php
Useful links
© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Preston So has been a web developer and designer since 2001, a creative
professional since 2004, and a Drupal developer since 2007. As Director of
Research and Innovation at Acquia, Preston leads new open-source and
research initiatives and helms Acquia Labs, the innovation lab featured in
international press.
Previously, Preston contributed to the Spark initiative in the Drupal project,
co-founded the Southern Colorado Drupal User Group in 2008, and operated
an award-winning freelance web and print design studio. Preston has
presented keynotes at conferences on four continents in multiple languages.
preston.so@acquia.com • @prestonso • #askgagovacquia
Thank you!

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Alexa, Ask GeorgiaGov: Better Citizen Engagement with Amazon Echo and Drupal 7

  • 1. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Preston So • 30 Apr 2018 • Acquia webinar Alexa, Ask GeorgiaGov Better citizen engagement with Amazon Echo and Drupal +
  • 2. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Preston So has been a web developer and designer since 2001, a creative professional since 2004, and a Drupal developer since 2007. As Director of Research and Innovation at Acquia, Preston leads new open-source and research initiatives and helms Acquia Labs, the innovation lab featured in international press. Previously, Preston contributed to the Spark initiative in the Drupal project, co-founded the Southern Colorado Drupal User Group in 2008, and operated an award-winning freelance web and print design studio. Preston has presented keynotes at conferences on four continents in multiple languages. preston.so@acquia.com • @prestonso • #askgagovacquia Welcome!
  • 3. © 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary We're Acquia's innovation lab — a small team of generalist engineers building co-funded projects that push the envelope in emerging technologies. Have forward-looking ideas but need expertise? Acquia Labs is your innovation partner.
  • 4. Drupal. JavaScript. Future. Keynotes. Sessions. Sprints. A different kind of Drupal conference. Mark your calendar and prep your proposal! Follow @decoupleddays on Twitter.
  • 5. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Inclusion and access to state government information – What is Ask GeorgiaGov? – Ask GeorgiaGov product strategy – How Ask GeorgiaGov works – Conversational content strategy and usability – Open discussion What we'll cover
  • 6. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Inclusion and access to state government information
  • 7. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Connecting citizens with information – Users like to be independent – Technology development is breaking norms – Content reinvented – Accessible content GeorgiaGov and innovation
  • 8. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Innovation as a byproduct – Mobile to CUI – Content-driven experience – Pages to conversations – Put citizens in control GeorgiaGov and innovation
  • 9. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary What is Ask GeorgiaGov?
  • 10. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Getting information to citizens faster. Save the phone wait times and the lines at agency offices; ask Georgia questions from the comfort of your home. – Widening access to information. Accessibility of content and inclusive information in citizen engagement. – Upholding the spirit of open-source innovation. If you use an open-source foundation, you should give some of your work back to the ecosystem. Value propositions
  • 11. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Ask GeorgiaGov Ask GeorgiaGov is a new Alexa skill which gives citizens of the state of Georgia answers to questions about popular state government topics such as how to renew a driver's license, how to register to vote, how to enroll your child in pre-K programs, and even who Georgia's governor is.
  • 12. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Ask GeorgiaGov product strategy
  • 13. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Build toward a single source of truth – Meet users where they are, regardless of ability or socioeconomic status – Leverage open source wherever possible GeorgiaGov product strategy
  • 14. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Extending GeorgiaGov popular topics with Alexa Existing content written to make common questions about government services easy to access.
  • 15. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Extending GeorgiaGov popular topics with Alexa
  • 16. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary How AskGeorgiaGov works
  • 17. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Extends Alexa’s baseline capability – An Alexa Skill is defined by: – Intents – Utterances – Slots – Captures the user’s speech in a useful form and passes it on to an Endpoint Alexa skills
  • 18. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – An operation or request that will be initiated by the user in a conversation – Quite literally, the intent the user holds when speaking Intents
  • 19. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Example phrases that help the Alexa service “learn” what to expect from users – Trigger an Intent when Alexa hears them – Can contain Slots within the phrase Utterances
  • 20. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Describe variable data that Alexa will capture within an utterance: – Date – City name – Color – Car model Slots
  • 21. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary HailCab I want a cab now HailCab Call me a cab HailLater I need a cab at {TIME} HailLater Send me a cab in {DURATION} Bringing it all together
  • 22. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Defines Intents and Utterances for: – Getting a user’s question – Finding out if the user wants related information – Getting a phone number the user can call – Passes info to the GeorgiaGov website (Endpoint) Ask GeorgiaGov Alexa skill
  • 23. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Receives user questions from Alexa as Slot data – Performs a search against indexed site content Custom handler module on GeorgiaGov
  • 24. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Manages the multistep conversation flow: Custom handler module on GeorgiaGov Topic Related Info Phone Number
  • 25. © 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Demo Alexa, ask GeorgiaGov
  • 26. © 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Alexa, ask GeorgiaGov
  • 27. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Conversational content strategy and usability
  • 28. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Conversational content – Single, brief thoughts – Zero UI, aural – Link- and reference-poor – Low verbosity tolerance Web-based vs. conversational content Web-based content – Predominantly prose – Screen-based, visual – Link- and reference-rich – High verbosity tolerance Link Link LinkLinkLink Intent IntentIntent
  • 29. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Information architecture requires more unidirectional, guided flows for accessing and navigating content
  • 30. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Content strategy for web-based experiences should not be applied as-is to conversational content
  • 31. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – For this project, we established two criteria for the eventual editorial experience: – The editorial workflow of the Georgia editorial staff will not be burdened by the addition of conversational content. – Editing a piece of web-based content and conversational content should be indistinguishable. Conversational content criteria
  • 32. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Topics – Questions – Links in questions – Affiliated agencies (phone number) Conversational content audit We then performed a comprehensive conversational content audit of the entirety of the site's content.
  • 33. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Conversational legibility Is this content understandable to a listener rather than a reader?
  • 34. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Content discoverability Is this content accessible to a listener using a more unidirectional decision flow rather than link-rich pages?
  • 35. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Making content less contextually specific How long can I receive unemployment benefits? How long can I receive benefits? Are unemployment benefits taxable? Are benefits taxable? Original New Original New
  • 36. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Calls to action and link-rich text The Social Security Administration can help you learn how to change your name on your Social Security card. Learn how to change your name on your Social Security card. You can receive payments through either a debit card or direct deposit. You can receive payments through either a debit card or direct deposit. Learn more about payments. Original New Original New
  • 37. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Calls to action and link-rich text In Georgia, the Family Support Registry typically pulls payments directly from your paycheck. However, you can send your own payments online through your bank account, your credit card, or Western Union. You may also send your payments by mail to the address provided in your court order. Read more about this. Original New
  • 38. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – Conversational usability is an unexplored and less- understood area in usability because it is solely aural, not visual or physical like typical interfaces. – Usability testing cannot be undertaken in the traditional way in conversational use cases. – No eye-tracking – No think-aloud Conversational usability
  • 39. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – The project team adopted the retrospective probing (RP) approach. – Think-aloud and concurrent probing (CP) in the conversational context doesn't work when Alexa intents are easily invoked. – RP allows for the conversational experience to be uninfluenced and for the collection of retrospective data. Conversational usability
  • 40. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Conversational usability testing You have a business license in Georgia, but you're not sure if you have to register on an annual basis. Talk with Alexa to find out the information you need. At the end, ask for a phone number for more information. You've just moved to Georgia and you know you need to transfer your driver’s license, but you're not sure what to do. Talk with Alexa to find out the information you need. At the end, ask for a phone number for more information.
  • 41. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – 79.2% success rate on all interactions – 71.2% of all interactions led to agency phone number being provided – Most popular keywords: vehicle registration, driver's licenses, state sales tax – Featured in Georgia Public Broadcasting segment – To be featured at VOICE Summit in Newark, first conference dedicated to Amazon Alexa Eight months later ...
  • 42. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary – drupal.org/project/alexa – drupal.org/project/alexa/releases/7.x-1.x-dev – drupal.org/project/alexa/releases/8.x-1.x-dev – github.com/jakubsuchy/amazon-alexa-php Useful links
  • 43. © 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary© 2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary Preston So has been a web developer and designer since 2001, a creative professional since 2004, and a Drupal developer since 2007. As Director of Research and Innovation at Acquia, Preston leads new open-source and research initiatives and helms Acquia Labs, the innovation lab featured in international press. Previously, Preston contributed to the Spark initiative in the Drupal project, co-founded the Southern Colorado Drupal User Group in 2008, and operated an award-winning freelance web and print design studio. Preston has presented keynotes at conferences on four continents in multiple languages. preston.so@acquia.com • @prestonso • #askgagovacquia Thank you!