Case Study: Interactive StorytellingBuilding a Framework for Interactive Stories
Problem.
How do we create an ongoing chatbot experience that entertains and engages users?
Background.
At Juicebox, we created a chatbot that models healthy sexual encounters (consent, communicating boundaries, sharing desires) through interactive conversations.
To entice users to re-engage with the bot regularly, we knew we needed to deliver content more frequently and decided to launch weekly themed stories.
Goals.
Combine story and conversation components into an engaging experience.
Create a repeatable process to build stories so we can launch new stories each week efficiently.
Process.
Personas
To determine how we should structure the stories to increase engagement, I analyzed WHO was interacting with our bot and HOW they were using it currently. Based on user interviews, surveys, and reading through user conversations, I identified two different personas: the Reader and the Gamer.
The Reader
Wants to read engaging bite-sized stories. Appreciates good writing and enjoys reading romance stories or erotic fiction. Tends to write short replies rather than spending time on more creative replies. Some of these users reply quickly to the story and then read it more slowly later on when they have more time to enjoy it.
The Gamer
Wants to interact with the bot and impact the story. Enjoys "playing" with the bot more to see what it understands. They tend to write longer and more creative replies to try and impact the story. Plays video games for fun and may have tried other AI chatbots.
Message-level Interactions
Keeping in mind our 2 personas, I zoomed in and examined interactions at the message-level. Since increasing engagement is a primary goal, we needed to make sure all our messages are designed to encourage interactivity.
Our messages with the most engagement had 2 important components: an acknowledgement of the user reply and a question/prompt to keep the conversation going, both which are especially critical for the Gamer persona.
The third component of a message is the Scene Details that keep the story moving. This is an area to highlight the quality writing, which is particularly important for the Reader persona.
Anatomy of a Single Message
Acknowledgement: "Ooh, that's perfect.”
Scene details: “I’m excited to have a relaxing spa day with you.”
Prompt: “Do you want to check out the pool or the sauna first?"
Conversational Flow
In addition to following a story format, we are having an interactive conservation with the user. We already discussed how to structure a single reply at the message level, but we also need to think about how a conversation flows well in a way that engages the user.
For the Gamer persona, it’s important to make sure the bot is engaging the user in a dialogue by asking open-ended questions (not just yes/no questions) that allow the user to show their creativity.
For the Reader, it’s important that the bot replies are variable to keep the writing interesting. This is more difficult for the acknowledgment part of the message where the bot may give generic replies like “okay” or “good.” Instead it’s preferable to keep the responses interesting which will appeal to both personas.
Story-level Experience
Next I zoomed out to look at the overall experience of interacting with a story. Since the plan is to launch new content each week, we want to make each new experience unique. A story format allows us to engage the user by setting a scene and building to a conclusion, rather than just conversing casually without a story arc. This story structure helps with ongoing engagement in the story and is particularly important for the Reader persona.
Since we were focusing on romantic/erotic stories a story flow could look like this:
For multi-part stories, we could just repeat the flow as many times as needed:
Later we plan to test premium paths. Payment placement would need to be tested but initially it could look like this:
Content Development Process
We now know what we want the interactive story to look like, but how do we build a new one each week?
We need a process!
We always worked through an outline with our writers in advance, however now we could use our defined story components to formalize the process:
Introduce theme
Set the scene
Warm up
Escalation
Resolution
After creating an outline with the writer, we tried having them write the story directly in the flow chart, however that slowed down the writing process and weakened the story quality.
So we created a spreadsheet to make it easier to standardize the process and communicate story needs in our template as new data becomes available. I also created a guidance document to train new writers and act as a reference to current writers.
The writers were happy with the new process and it reduced our content development time by a week.
Story Build Process
Based on the defined story components, I created a template diagram to use for our new weekly stories to serve as a starting point for the story happy path. Once the happy path was established we could build additional story branches. This template allowed our developers to export the story data into code with less manual work, cutting a few days off development time.
Testing and Feedback Loops
We have been doing internal testing from the beginning but standardizing our story components also allows us to test more efficiently with a templated testing checklist shown here. Standard story components also allow us to build reports and track metrics more easily.
Content Development
Outline story
Write a script with happy paths in spreadsheet template
Add messages in templated flow in diagramming tool
Add alternative paths and messages in flow
Story Build
Developer exports story from diagramming tool into code
NLU developer updates intents and entities, adds training data as needed
Testing and Edits
Test bot story internally and make edits
Send to beta users, check reports and conversations, and make edits
Launch and Assessment
Send to all users
Assess success of story. Strong stories are optimized based on user data and become a part of onboarding flow
Our New Process
Result.
New Framework
After launching weekly stories we saw a massive increase in ongoing engagement, not surprisingly since we were now sending weekly stories.
Now we have a story framework that is engaging for our two primary persons:
For the Gamer, we have messages that are optimized for interactivity and a template that allows us to build stories with more branches to explore.
For the Reader, we have a story structure that progresses and message variability that keeps the story interesting.
Standardized Approach
Our new standardized approach to building stories has cut down development time from 30 days to 10 days.
I think the biggest improvement was that we now had clear requirements for our writers so they were able to produce better draft stories and there was less cleanup to do later as we added branches.
Next Steps
Next steps include adding monetization starting with premium story paths. Monetization can occur as we continue to optimize the existing template by testing different story themes, key story messages, optimal story length, and the placement of major story branches.