Thanks to everyone for the excellent feedback on the first interactions video. If you haven’t seen that already check it out here:
One of the suggestions in that thread was to be more methodical - looking at what different interactions look like from the context of a single Skill. This video does exactly that. It looks at interactions that start with the Weather Skill, and how different types of Skills should interrupt or interact with Weather Skill output.
Once you’ve had a watch, it would be great to get your feedback on these different interactions. They’ll help inform the design of a technical spec that accommodate the types of interactions you expect.
Does the video reflect the way you would want your Mycroft assistant to behave?
If not, how would you want it to be different?
What types of Skills should follow this pattern of behaviour, and which Skills should not?
Be sure not to miss the Volume interaction starting around 3:10. It’s a little different to the rest.
All looks on target to me. Especially appreciated the way Mycroft backed up to the beginning of the sentence that was interrupted when he resumes the weather summary.
Everything looks good to me. I’m curious: if the music had been playing when the weather was asked about (instead of a “stop”), would it have been resumed afterwards?
Yeah that’s our current thinking. This could however be different for different types of media.
If for example you were listening to a 60 second clip of the days news headlines, and mid-way through you asked for the weather. Would you expect/want the news clip to resume, restart or stop after the weather had been reported?
So if you were listening to music you would want the music to continue (possibly at a reduced volume aka ducked) and Mycroft to report the weather over the top?
Are there times when you wouldn’t want that behaviour? I’m thinking about the news or a podcast as examples - would you want the news volume ducked but to continue playing in the background?
If so are there other examples that fall into one category or the other? “Things that should duck” vs “things that should pause and resume”?
Yes, like in car system, the music or the radio is lowered when it gives you directions, or on a phone when receiving a text.
In the category of things that should duck, or stay the same : smartplug, lights. Mostly things that start with an impulse and doesn’t stop without a different impulse.
I can think of one example of pause then resume for an impulse : vaccum cleaner robots, they should be paused if the hey Mycroft command is detected, otherwise there would be parasite noises.
So duck when sharing the speaker, and pause and resume when the microphone can receive parasite sounds.
I have also examples where I haven’t clear expectations: when there is a continuous or gradual states, like lights dimmer, or lowering the blinds. I’m not sure if it should pause them then resume or just stop (stop might be safer, those are the kind of fixtures that sometimes require to continuously hold a button)
I’d expect the news clip to resume, maybe backed up a few seconds. Music, however, would make more sense to “duck” if possible.
Regarding IoT, i wouldn’t expect Mycroft to pause opening/closing the blinds (for example) if I asked about the weather in the middle of it. However, a “stop” command would be expected to pause the action. What’s difficult there is that some types of IoT “swtiches” (via Home Assistant, etc.) don’t have the ability to stop – they can only reverse the action.
