When an avatar recognizes a person, the process begins with the “Person recognized” element after the Home icon in the upper left corner and follows the process arrows through all elements.
All elements will be discussed later in this documentation. It is not necessary to understand them now. This page is only intended to provide an overview of what a process might look like in the end.
If no person is detected, the avatar jumps to the element “No person detected.” This is the so-called idle screen.
As long as there is no new element, the avatar remains in the current element. If the avatar loses its face (face detection), regardless of where you are in the flow, the flow jumps to the element “No person detected.”
It is always good to have buttons so that the user can skip elements or go back if they want to hear something a second time or something else. For the back button, you can simply draw an arrow by dragging the output circle of an element to a previous element. The back arrow can also be used to skip the opening speech, for example. For shorter sequences, it often makes sense to return to the second element at the end instead of the first.
Our sample project, the wine sommelier (see here: https://go.plural.io/s/9c453bf582), is quite long, and here it makes sense to jump to the first element. Here, the avatar receives some initialization parameters that will be needed later, so we use an element at the end to jump back to the beginning.
Creating a flow
Concept
Plural is designed to create a conversation between the avatar and humans. This is reflected in the way flows should be structured. Try to be engaging without the avatar giving long monologues. Always guide the user in one direction, tell them what options they have or what words they could use.
Informative post
At the beginning of each flow, you will see the fields “Human detected” and “No human detected.” You can think of the “No human detected” field as a resting state that repeats as long as no human is in the avatar's field of view. As soon as a human is detected, the flow following “Human detected” is triggered and continues until no human is seen for 10 seconds (default setting).
General suggestions
As already mentioned, flows are intended as conversations between the avatar and the user and should therefore be designed accordingly. Not all suggestions are suitable for every use case! With open endings, the avatar gets stuck on the last screen or does nothing while the user wonders what to do next. Why not return to the main menu or the beginning of the conversation after a pause? Use the “No human interaction for 20 seconds” feature, have the avatar repeat the question, or give a hint on how to proceed. Make it fun and enjoyable! Show the user options they can see, or have the avatar suggest them verbally. Long introductory texts should be avoided, especially if they are repeated frequently (as in a main menu). If you add media, give the user enough time to view it. Alternatively, you can use a question or menu slide that hides buttons and allows the user to say “Next,” “Back,” or “Exit.”