How to Ask Clear Questions - Amazon Alexa Voice Design Guide

Learn how to design for voice with our video series on voice design. Paul Cutsinger and Jeff Blankenburg teach you how to ask clear questions when building a conversational UI. Sign up to get the latest Amazon Alexa news delivered straight to your inbox: http://bit.ly/2IBQo95

Download our guides to get started:
- 10 Things Every Voice Developer Should Do to Build for Voice: http://bit.ly/2Kvy0DS
- 6 Tips for Building Stellar Kids Skills: http://bit.ly/2N7xFWi
- How Building for Voice Differs from Building for Screen: http://bit.ly/2KgsVzX

Build with our tutorials:
- How to Build a Fact Skill: https://amzn.to/2KjsncC
- How to Build a City Guide Skill: https://amzn.to/2MzMWOE

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TRANSCRIPT:
It's nice to take turns.

A conversational UI is composed of turns, where someone says something, and Alexa responds. Simple interactions like "tell me joke" or "set a timer" have just one turn.

A multi-turn dialog is when a person and Alexa go back and forth several times. In each of these turns, Alexa responds to the previous input and prompts for information and instruction. Let's talk about how clarity and disambiguation make these turns successful.

Alright. What would you say if I asked would you like fries or salad?

Yes?

I was expecting him to either say the word fries or the word salad. That's why we can't have nice things, Jeff. You keep breaking them. A better prompt would have been "You can have fries or salad, which would you like?"

That's right. Also, you want to keep turns succinct and natural. It would be odd and annoying to be asked "We have fries and salad. If you would like fries, say Fries, and if you would like salad, say Salad."

Turn taking also happens when confirming what Alexa heard. An explicit confirmation asks a yes or no question like "I'll schedule your haircut for 4 pm, OK?" This is important when getting it right really matters, so you have to make sure that the turn can handle the correction.

I'm Jeff Blankenburg. Thanks for watching this video. You can read more in the Alexa Design Guide.

And I'm Paul Cutsinger, and I'm looking forward to seeing the kinds of skills you make.

Alexa Skills Kit: https://alexa.design/skills