Chatbot Q&A with Vesko Kolev and Web Designer Magazine

Progress VP of Product, Vesko Kolev, recently sat down with Web Designer magazine to talk the future of chatbots and the impact on applications.

The latest issue of Web Designer magazine featured an article by Progress VP of Product, Vesko Kolev, entitled “Why Developers Need to Embrace Chatbot Tools.” The article discusses the impending rise of the chatbot, the benefits, and the way AI (and chatbots) will redefine the concept of applications.

The editors also printed a short Q&A that they conducted with Vesko. The Q&A is reprinted with permission below. The full article can be found in the print magazine in stores or online.

Q: What do you think are the key benefits that chatbots bring to business applications?

A: The key benefits are time, money and improved user experience. Developers can iterate multiple orders of magnitude faster on defining and improving a chatbot compared to the traditional way of building applications, thus being truly agile and able to get feedback from actual users almost in real-time. Chatbots also get smarter over time and the UI is in many cases being generated automatically, requiring less human intervention. Finally, if you have powerful front-end tooling, then you are able to have cognitive chatbots in all your channels.

Q: What are the accessibility issues that conversational UI creates for designers and developers?

A: I can’t think of an accessibility issue that the conversational UI creates. Actually, it is quite the opposite. One of the most exciting features of cognitive chatbots is that they will allow for a far more enjoyable experience for those with visual defects. Up to now, unless the application has been specifically developed for visually impaired people, it is practically not accessible for them. With the voice recognition technology, intelligent chatbots allow visually impaired people to get an experience that almost equals the experience of everyone else.

Q: How much more advanced do you think chatbots will be in 5 years?

A: The tipping point will be when enough organisations start to use them in their daily operations. If they begin to experiment with cognitive chatbots then they will see the power of them. As more data is generated and fed in, the more they will offer the business from a competitive edge perspective. Heightened user personalisation, increased productivity, sophisticated advice, all of these will become available to applications that have this technology underpinning them. The beauty of where we will be is that so much is dependent on how the cognitive chatbots teach themselves, so I’m really excited to see where we are in the next five years!

Find Out More

Curious to learn more about our chatbot offerings? Check out our comprehensive Conversational UI controls and components available across our Telerik and Kendo UI toolsets, as well as our cognitive self-service chatbot, NativeChat.