A Welcome Screen for IBM Watson Assistant

The Watson Assistant home screen includes a welcome message and quick-start buttons to help users initiate a conversation with the virtual assistant.

In 2020, I had the opportunity to help design the home screen for Watson Assistant, IBM’s virtual assistant. I worked closely with the design lead, development team, and project manager to define a welcome experience for Watson Assistant. I contributed new interactive components and created a customizable home screen that shipped in August 2020.

The Watson Assistant home screen includes a welcome message and quick-start buttons to help users initiate a conversation with the virtual assistant.

Background

Our clients reported that only forty percent of their customers engage with the virtual assistant. Our findings also showed that users launch and exit the application without interacting with the UI because they are unsure what to type in the text field. Additionally, depending on the product's environment, the experience of choosing the appropriate channel to get questions answered can feel overwhelming, leaving the user lost in a sea of information.

My team came together to think through the problem space and improve the current experience. Our goal was to provide clarity and focus when users start a chat. We wanted to remove the obstacle of figuring out how to begin a conversation with the virtual assistant.

For this work effort, we needed to consider two users: those who are building an assistant for their product and those interacting with the virtual assistant to complete a task.

The Welcome Experience

After exploring existing virtual assistants and chatbots, we noticed common patterns, including welcome messages, photos, avatars, emojis, and buttons. This inspired us to develop the idea of a welcome experience for a chatbot.

How do we visualize an introduction between a user and a virtual agent to look like? How can we evoke a greeting that invites users to engage with an assistant that will help them complete their tasks? And how can we guide users so they know when to use a chatbot versus a search bar?

First, I gathered images that communicate an introduction: a name tag, a business card, a splash screen, an invitation card; then I created a mood board to share with my team. This stimulated a discussion about the information we wanted to include on the home screen. We wanted the amount of information to be minimal yet bold. We focused on three main elements: the name of the assistant, a short welcome message, and quick-start links that would help kick off the conversation.

Process

Each team member contributed a quick home screen sketch to help improve the usability of Watson Assistant during our brainstorming session. We came up with a range of concepts that we grouped and prioritized. This helped us decide which ideas to move forward with.

While working on lo-fi sketches, I began positioning the content, arranging the visual hierarchy and placement of the elements, and incorporating components from the Watson Assistant pattern library.

After presenting to my team we agreed that because the home screen marks the beginning of the conversation, the welcome message should read first, followed by the quick-start links, and then the header.

A Customizable Layout

Using a solid color to separate the home screen from the web page, creates a visual separation within the z-space to help provide a clear and straightforward interaction with the virtual assistant. The block of color makes use of the selected primary color (determined by the user/creator) and simplifies the process of customization.

Watson Assistant provides users with tooling to build and customize an assistant. For the welcome message and quick- start links, we wanted to give users a way to personalize their content. This meant evaluating all use cases and designing versions that would accommodate multiple scenarios.

Conclusion

After the home screen feature was released, within three weeks we found that engagement went up 32% and users were interacting with the assistant more seamlessly. Conversations were smoothly initiated with the help of focused quick-start links.

Currently, the Watson Assistant team is working on additional features for home screen, expanding on ideas from our brainstorm session.