Using Behavior Tags

The following describes the steps for training your Digital Person via behavior tags.

1. Set up your project. 

2. While writing your content, highlight words or phrases that you would like additional behaviors to be associated with. 

3. Go to the Behavior Adjustments section of the form. 

4. Find the behaviors that you want to train. Remember that there are sentence-based (Long) and word-based (Short) tags. 

• Sentence-based tags (or Long tags) apply the specified behavior over the whole sentence containing the entry. 
• Word-based tags (or Short tags) only apply the behavior when the word(s) you have specified are spoken and last for a set duration.

5. Add an entry to the behavior of your choice. 

6. To add another, click enter. 

7. Behavior tags can be edited at any time, before or after deploying. 

8. You must Update Preview or Deploy your project for edits to the behavior tags to take effect.

Word-based Behavior Tags Example

Guided Example

Here is an example of how you can use a behavior tag to enrich the interaction experience. For example, you want your DP to utter the following message: 

Hi there, I’m Sam. I’m a Digital Person from Soul Machines. I represent the future of human-computer interfaces. I work in a pretty smart way since I have a digital brain with a whole host of neurons and the like. Simply put, I can listen and respond not just to what you say but how you say it by tapping into your emotions.

The possible behavior tags to this phrase and triggered behaviors are:

1. Positive Sentence-Based Tag (a.k.a. Long). A happy expression (smiling) held for the duration of the sentence, in which the given entry is found

2. Technical Word-Based Tag (a.k.a. Short). Either a brow raise, a head nod, or a combination of both, performed as the Digital Person says the given entry

The entries for each could be as follows:

Note: Notice how no punctuation is used in the tags. Using punctuation may cause the system to malfunction.

By using the above behavior tags and the entries summarized above, the Digital Person delivers the message in the following manner. The text inside the yellow brackets shows sentences where the Digital Person will be smiling, and the blue text shows when a short emphasis gesture will be applied.

[ Hi there, I’m Sam. I’m a Digital Person from Soul Machines. ] I represent the future of human-computer interfaces. I work in a pretty smart way since I have a digital brain with a whole host of neurons and the like. [ Simply put, I can listen and respond not just to what you say but how you say it by tapping into your emotions. ]

Pro Tips

The following tips can help in designing and implementing effective behavior tags.

How to design a good behavior tag?

View your behavior tags as a mechanism for drawing attention to certain pieces of content, it is not necessary to add behavior tags to every sentence.

Begin with behavior tags that specify markup that will span whole sentences and follow with emphasis behavior tags where content requires additional attention.

As much as possible, you should aim to find commonalities across utterances and add these as behavior tags. For example, you will likely always want your Digital Person to assume a positive expression when speaking about your company, regardless of the context. Similarly, questions are typically phrased using the same language constructions e.g. “Would you”, “Have you”, “Can I”, thus it is more efficient to add these as entries, rather than specific subjects.

Length of behavior tags

When authoring word-based tags or “short” tags, ensure that the entry is as succinct as possible so that the gesture is applied at the appropriate place. Let us use the following phrase as an example, “I've had a lot of fun chatting with you today.” If you wanted to add a short eyebrow raise at the appropriate time, you would want to target the right words. 

By creating an entry for “I’ve had a lot of fun,” you’ll end up seeing an emphasis on the words “I’ve had” because the duration of the gesture won’t last the whole phrase. Instead, you should target the part of the phrase that you want to emphasize. In this case, “lot of fun”. It will feel more natural.

Gesturing towards content

We commonly use the East facing gaze gestures for identifying content or engaging with content and the West facing gaze gesture to indicate when your Digital Person is thinking or trying to explain something complex.

In this case, entries should aim to be 4-5 words long, at least, to avoid false triggers. For example: “the link on the right” or “at the bottom of the screen”

Avoid duplicates

Always check for duplicate entries within a behavior, and between different behaviors. It’s possible to support this, but any duplicates should be intentional. They should aim to be complementary, not contradictory.

Punctuation

We will maintain an updated guide for punctuation that can be used in behavior tags.

Note: Your tag should always include the same punctuation as your corpus entry.