Glossary

A

• Autonomous Animation: The animation technology behind the Digital People renders them in real-time, including matching mouth movements to speech and facial expressions.

• API: Application program interface (API) call is the process of reading and writing information using third party sources or sites. 

C

• CLI: Command-line interface, a method of interacting w/ a computer through lines of text, usually in a terminal

• Compositional Elegant Variation: Emulation of human’s natural variation in speech

• Content Card: Visual displays of options users can verbally select. Looks like a text box and appears on the screen beside the Digital Person.

• Conversation Branch: the conversation node where a user is presented with different conversation choices 

• Conversation Corpus: the conversation in its entirety 

• Conversation Flow: the conversation design that shows how a conversation progresses through a series of dialog exchanges

• Conversation Nodes: the points in the conversation where the Digital Person speaks; aka dialog node

• Conversation Tree: also known as dialog tree, this is the main conversation that the user will have with the Digital Person; comprised of a series of core topics that branch through conversation turns and link out to other topics within the Conversation Corpus

• Corpus Architecture: entire structural body of the conversation -- how it is constructed and how it flows

• Corpus: typically understood as “body of text” -- in Soul Machines, a corpus is almost a “script” of whatever needs to be implemented for our Digital Person. 

• CTA: Call to Action; allows for the Digital Person to keep the conversation going. I.e. when asked its name, the Digital Person would say “My name is __. Now, which of the following topics would you like to talk about?” so that the conversation progresses as desired

• CTR: click-through rate -- a metric commonly used to measure the success of a certain campaign/website/product. 

D

• Digital DNA Studio: Creative tool to enable its customers to quickly create, customize and test user experiences and functions for their Digital Person solution.

• DDNAS: Digital DNA Studio.

• Digital Person: Soul Machines’ product, realistic, interactive, animated humans that can respond to user’s conversations and emotions.

• DP: Digital Person

E

• Elegant Failure: The conversation branch is taken when your Digital Person fails to understand the intent. Designed to help the user and redirect them back to the Happy Path.

• EML: Emotional markup language, the scripting language used within the NLP engine to indicate the expression that the Digital Person should express based on the intended experience. It requires the implementation of specific phrases that should consistently trigger specific emotions from the Digital Person when spoken.

• EQ: Emotional quotient (EQ) is the degree of capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s)

F

• Fallback Intent: the default response provided by the Digital Person to the user when it fails to understand what the user has said; attempts to have the user paraphrase in such a manner that the Digital Person can take the conversation back to the happy path 

• Floating Intents: outlying branches within the conversation tree designed to catch intents that skew away from the happy path such that the conversation can be led back to the desired path

H

• Happy Path: The ideal path taken by the user through the conversation tree that achieves the Digital Person’s goal. 

I

• Intent: the purpose behind what the user says to the Digital Person. NLU will match the user’s speech to a predefined set of intents using a bank of training phrases. 

K

• KPI: Key Performance Indicators, measurements that indicate how successful sales efforts are

L

• Linting: Automatic code checking that can flag unused variables, syntax errors, and error-prone code, frequently integrated into a text editor or IDE.

• Lip Sync: Syncing the Digital Person’s lips to the words it is speaking. Makes the Digital Person look more human-like when speaking.

N

• NLG: Natural language generation, the synthesis of grammatical human-like speech from a given input

• NLP: Natural language processing, transforming speech input into structured data, somewhat including NLU

• NLU: Natural language understanding, extracting meaning and intent from speech input

• NPS: Net Promotor Score is a tool to measure the loyalty of the customer’s relationship to the company. The measure is calculated from a survey that is provided to users after interacting with the product;

P

• Parameter: data to be sent in an API Request, formatted to the API’s specifications 

• Persona: The aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others: her public persona

• Persona Development: Creating an engaging personality for each Digital Person according to tailored client needs 

• PII: Personally identifiable information (PII) is any data that can be used to identify a specific individual. Social Security numbers, mailing or email addresses, and phone numbers have most commonly been considered PII, but technology has expanded the scope of PII considerably. It can include an IP address, login IDs, social media posts, or digital images. Geolocation, biometric, and behavioral data can also be classified as PII.

Q

• QA: Quality assurance - checking that the development stage product has been well-implemented and is ready to be moved onto the production stage

R

• Request: Is a collection of data/parameters sent with an API call.

S

• Sample Dialog: the dialog that writers add to each conversation node

• STT: Speech to text, recognition of human speech, and translation into text. Converts speech to text so that a computer can understand you - like Siri.

T

• Test Suite: A collection of files containing test scripts that verify that a codebase is functioning properly and will not fail in anticipated edge cases. Having a large and robust test suite allows developers to see that their code may cause errors before it is deployed to production. 

• TTS: Text to speech, the creation of human-like speech from given text input. Commanding a Digital Person what to say

• Turn-taking: the way conversation normally flows in alternating turns where one speaks and the other responds

• Training Phrase: Usually a collection of many phrases which match a single intent, used to train the NLU model 

U

• UAT: User acceptance testing, a methodical testing process in which a Digital Person is tested to ensure that it is usable and accomplishes what it was intended to do.

• UI: User Interface, a device or program enabling a user to communicate with a computer

• Use Case / Role: defining the specific role of the Digital Employee and its interactions with the user to achieve a goal.

V

• Variable: Is the referencing value that can be recalled; field or response that will be completed by an API call

W

• Web SDK: Software Development Kit which allows customers to use the Technology without exposing proprietary systems or core IP and providing instructions on how to access the use of the software