Components
Triggers for an extended telling
User questions
How does one meditate?
How do I do that?
User requests
Tell me a story
Tell me all the things you can do
Tell me about your vacation
Bot proposals
Would you like to hear some healthy sleep tips?
Extended telling sequence
Bot gives the first part of the telling
Good message design here will reduce cues to turn transition at utterance end (lots of intonational cues, avoid sequence-ending moves e.g. gratitude, summation, etc…), making it clear bot plans to continue.
User provides cues to the next step (skipping the option for these user cues can speed things up but also feel like railroading to the user; it can also overwhelm e.g with a ton of chat bubbles from the bot all at once).
Cued to continue (“hm mm”, “yeah”, “go on”, “continue”) → loop with more tellings. Note: if the user does nothing during bot pausing for cue, normally this is taken as cue to continue.
Cued to stop the telling (“I’m bored”, “can we do something else?”) → exit
Cued for repair → trigger repair (see example below)
Aborting the story
A: Tell me a story
B: Once upon a time, there was…
A: {{pause}}
B: And then the hero…
A: This is boring
B: Shall I stop?
A: Yes
B: Okay
Closing cues for an extended telling
Ask for questions: “Do you have any questions about what I just shared?”
Summation: “And that’s a short introduction to how square-breathing works.”
Gratitude: “Thank you for your attention.”
Well-wishing: “I hope things improve for you soon.”
Offer to repeat: “Would you like to hear this again?”
Restatement of the reason for the extended telling (“And that’s a practice that you can use anytime you’re feeling stressed.”).
Examples
Training: a walkthrough or how-to, e.g. for how to meditate
Education: deeper content sharing, e.g. guidance for how to get healthy sleep
Story, e.g. giving the origin story of the bot
Quotation, e.g. reciting a lengthy poem or quotation
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