M enu Bots, Google Meet and Design Value
Here’s the news we’re talking about around the Zbra Studios water cooler. We’ve provided key bullet points from each article for the speed readers out there. For those looking to dig in, click on the link for the full story.
As Messenger’s bots lose steam, Facebook pushes menus over chat
By Sarah Perez from TechCrunch
- “Facebook today announced an upgraded Messenger Platform, which introduces a new way for users to interact with bots: via simple persistent menus, including those without the option to chat with the bot at all.”
- “Instead of forcing users to talk with a bot, developers can choose to create a persistent menu that allows for multiple, nested items as a better way of displaying all the bots’ capabilities in a simple interface.”
- “I guess we can’t call them chatbots anymore?”
Google unveils ‘Meet,’ a Hangouts app for businesses
By Steve Dent from Engadget
- “While it hasn’t made a formal announcement, it launched an iOS app and partially-functional website (spotted by Techcrunch), though it’s not yet on Android, oddly enough.”
- “Google recently killed its Hangouts API and said that consumer apps that use it won’t work after April 25th.”
- “As with recent moves by Facebook and Microsoft, it will likely integrate its Google Assistant bot into the program to help you schedule appointments, exchange contacts and more.”
Return on Design
By Matt Palmquist from strategy+business
- “A number of professional design organizations hand out prestigious awards for functionality, aesthetics, user interface, creativity, and environmental impact. By gauging a company’s stock movement over a two-day period following the announcement of an award, the authors were able to quantify the value shareholders place on superior design. “
- “The analysis showed that shareholders significantly boost the value of firms that are recognized for their effective product design.”
- “The competitiveness of an industry, by contrast, did not have much bearing on market reaction. Nor did the growth potential of a firm. Good design may matter irrespective of business cycles or the cutthroat nature of a particular sector.”
Nick Cotton is a project manager based out of Los Angeles, California. He’s got a background in the entertainment industry, and uses his talent at online messaging to extol the virtues of content marketing, interactive fiction and sentences measuring 280 characters or less.
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