Topic depth

After you agree on the breadth of your topics, you need to focus on the level of detail that you want to cover within them. With each topic, you must explore all possible paths that the user might take in conversation until it meets its natural conclusion.

You also need to include common exchanges, such as when a chatbot doesn’t understand the question or what happens if an error occurs.

It’s best to start with a happy path and then add new branches of conversation as you explore the twist and turns in the interaction between the user and the bot.

Figure 1: Topic Breadth and Depth, IBM Design for Artificial Intelligence, Sept 2019, Lawrence Humphrey.