Microsoft Ignite Australia 2017 - Conversations as a Platform

Have you ever wondered how a computer can learn to speak to a human? Siri and Cortana are recent examples of conversation bots, but the technology has been around for decades in different forms. Last week Dr Neil Roodyn from nsquared presented talks at Microsoft’s Australian tech conference, Ignite. His first two talks were about building bots that can hold a conversation with a customer, and potential ways in which this process could be used for business.

Click on the links below to watch the presentations.   

Conversation as a Platform Part 1 
Neil discusses the ways in which conversations have evolved in contemporary life through the use of various forms of technology. He explains how to code a conversational bot in Microsoft Visual Studio, using the example of ordering food online. Neil talks about how developers can create a good structure for the code, and explains the complex steps of chaining dialogs.

   

Conversation as a Platform Part 2 
In Part 2 Neil discusses ways in which we can create richer conversations between customers and applications. He discusses ways in which programs can make devices seem more intelligent, and how they can use data and ‘machine learning’ to gather information to make accurate predictions about customers. He talks in depth about LUIS – Language Understanding Intelligent Service, which allows apps to understand language. 

Why Software Sucks

Dr. Neil is whinging again (Australian for whining) about poor software development. He says the wrong people are developing software because the common tools have become so easy (see his blog post, "democratization of software") and that developers aren't avidly considering UX. His favorite book on the subject, David Platt's Why Software Sucks supports his theory.

"I could think of a way to get a higher percentage of software developers thinking of UX" says Dr. Neil. "Remove the others." Wow, imagine working for THIS guy! He sure doesn't mince words! :)

Here at nsquared, UX is our priority. We start with UX considerations for every project and then use the right tools for the right jobs. The problem with the majority of developers out there is that they don't know enough tools. "It's the hammer and nail analogy," says Dr. Neil. "If all you have is a hammer, you try to use it for everything." Of course we use Visual Studio, Expression Blend, and other Microsoft tools, but we are also adept at a number of other programs such as Paint.NET and Xcode, Dashcode, NUnit, and many others.

If you have projects where wowing the end user is your priority, contact us!

Expression Blender Bender

nsquared's very own Pierce has been Blending like a mad man! He tells me (in his Expressive way) that he uses it because "it makes some things easier".


Hmmm, I guess that means that although he has been immersed for 30 hours, he's pretty ambivalent, but then, maybe that's just Pierce. So I dug a bit deeper....


Pierce likes that Blend has a GUI for editing xaml properties, but dislikes it because Visual Studio still renders better than Blend. He's excited about the Expression Blend 3 intellisense and looks forward to enhancing more of our top secret projects with his rapidly increasing skillset. While you know we can't talk about the applications for which Pierce is Blending, we thank him for all his extra hard work this week!