User stories

User stories are a vital tool in the design and testing of chatbots. They are stories about fictional users, what they want, and how they will interact with your bot. When we create a user story, it needs to be as close to a real user as possible. They should be based on a real user or the type of user that would be using your chatbot. If you have existing customers that you are wanting to target your chatbot toward then you can create data-driven user stories.

To create a user story, start by describing the user and why they are talking with your bot. Examples of the pizza ordering bot might be the following:

• Chris, a 23-year-old joiner. Wants to order a pizza on his phone so he can pick it up on the way home from work.
• Claire, a 35-year-old bank manager. Ordering a pizza using Alexa while she watches TV.

The user descriptions don't have to be very long or complicated, but they have to represent the kind of users the bot will get.

For each user, go through the flow diagram pretending that the bot is talking to that user. The aim of this is to test your flow diagram before we start building the bot. If you find that the conversation doesn't work for a certain part of the flow diagram, changing it now will save you time later on.

For simple examples like this pizza order, there won't be a big difference between all of the conversations, but user stories will become more important as we create more complicated flow diagrams.