Medical voice assistant

Asavoice assistant

Asa is a voice assistant that helps patients schedule medical appointments via phone.

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Project details

Tools used

Context

Asa is a voice assistant that I developed as a final project after taking the courses Conversation Design and Designing Conversations with Voiceflow and CDI by the Conversation Design Institute.

This voice assistant is targeted to patients who want to schedule a medical appointment with their clinician in a fast and efficient way. Asa can be easily reached via phone.

Methodology

Double diamond design process

DISCOVER

DEFINE

DEVELOP

DELIVER

Methodology

Double diamond design process

DISCOVER

DEFINE

DEVELOP

DELIVER

Discover

User personas

Understand users

Sample user persona created using FigJam

I began this project by assessing users' needs. Since people from all ages use medical services, I started by creating some user personas that represented the wants and needs of actual users.

Given that my voice assistant was a final project for a course and I did not have access to real users, I interviewed friends and relatives of different ages to become more familiar with my potential target audience.

I ended up with six user personas that helped me identify key themes and patterns that could be helpful to develop my voice assistant.

Methodology

Double diamond design process

DISCOVER

DEFINE

DEVELOP

DELIVER

Define

Define the problem

Voice assistant has to be available via phone

Based on the information I gathered from conducting some research on my target audience, I understood my users' needs as well as the main issues my users could have with alternative options to schedule a medical appointment (e.g., via internet).

Voice assistant must ask for patients' basic information without asking for too many details

Scheduling an appointment through the voice assistant must be a fast and simple process

I made a list with features my voice assistant should have in order to guide me in the design process.

Voice assistant must also provide an option for rescheduling an existing appointment

Methodology

Double diamond design process

DISCOVER

DEFINE

DEVELOP

DELIVER

Develop

Prototype a conversational workflow

Taking into account the list of features I developed, I prototyped a basic conversational workflow using Voiceflow.

The workflow was created around three main options offered to patients: scheduling an appointment, rescheduling an appointment, and canceling an appointment.

Each option would ask for a patient's basic information and would then continue to ask other relevant things. A connection with an external database is needed for retrieving, checking, and updating information.

Develop

Sample adjectives to describe the voice assistant's personality

Define voice assistant's personality

With a better idea of how the voice assistant would operate, I defined its personality and tone.

I came up with adjectives that described how the voice assistant would think and how it would interact with users if it were a real person. Some relevant adjectives were "attentive", "helpful", "compassionate", and "accessible", among others.

I also gave the voice assistant a name, Asa, a gender-neutral name which means "healer" in some cultures. Lastly, I came up with a list of sample utterances which reflected the voice assistant's personality.

Sample sentences for the voice assistant

Methodology

Double diamond design process

DISCOVER

DEFINE

DEVELOP

DELIVER

Deliver

Implement voice assistant

Offering options

After having defined the conversational workflow and the personality, I implemented the voice assistant using Google's Dialogflow. To do this, I defined the intents, entities, and responses. Likewise, I also came up with sample utterances to train the NLU engine.

Using 1st person

Providingexamples

When writing the actual messages that the voice assistant would say, I followed conversational best practices for voice applications (see examples on the right panel). Lastly, I tested the voice assistant to make sure everything worked properly.

Confirming information

Using tags

Deliver

Determine metrics for success

Even though my voice assistant was the final project for a course, I came up with a list of metrics I would consider if the voice assistant was in use.

Number of calls per day

Total number of engaged conversations

Total number of unique users

These metrics would allow me to pinpoint the weaknesses of my voice assistant and make improvements.

Total number of missed messages

Customer satisfaction

Thank you

Offering options

Instead of asking very broad questions at the beginning of the conversation, such as "What can I help you with?", it is better if the voice assistant provides some options for the user.In this case, the voice assistant provided three options: scheduling, rescheduling and canceling an appointment. Offering more than three options could be problematic, since users usually cannot remember that many choices.

Confirming information

When a user provides some type of information to the assistant, it is important to confirm it, especially with voice assistants with which users cannot "go back" that easily. Likewise, this is also key when the information is sent to an external database, which was the case with this voice assistant.

Using 1st person

Some studies have shown that users prefer when voice assistants use the 1st person singular pronoun "I" rather than the 3rd person (e.g., "the assistant", "the system").

Using tags

Using tags such as "okay" is helpful when designing voice assistants. By using these tags, the voice assistant acknowledges it has received the user's input.At the same time, it is good practice to not always use the same tag, but rather include a variety of them in the messages to avoid the conversation becoming monotonous.

Providing examples

When asking for complex information, it is not recommended to specify the format the voice assistant expects, but rather provide an illustrative example. This sounds less robotic and more conversational.For example, instead of saying "please, provide your date of birth using the format month, day, and year", the voice assistant could say "please, provide your date of birth, for example, August 12, 1965".