Response Picker

Summary

Response Picker picks and keeps track of previous responses given to the user from a list. When building a VUI, some responses you may want to vary like greetings and exits. This tool is framework agnostic. This should work with Actions on Google, Alexa, and any conversational framework that works with Javascript.

Example

With the following list: ["Hello", "Hi", "Hey", "Howdy"]

Without Response Picker - Random:

• Response 1: "Hi"
• Response 2: "Hi",
• Response 3: "Hello",
• Response 4: "Howdy",
• Response 5: "Hello",

Response Picker - Random with memory:

• Response 1: "Hi",
• Response 2: "Howdy",
• Response 3: "Hello"
• Response 4: "Hey",
• Response 5: "Howdy"

Just using random, you have a 1 in 4 chance of following up a subsequent response with the same response. Response Picker prevents this by keeping track of the last response and exausting the list of responses before repeating a response.

Usage

Install using NPM:

npm install --save response-picker

Add Response Picker to your code:

var ResponsePicker = require('response-picker').ResponsePicker;

let responses = ["Hi", "Hello", "Hey"];
let trackerObject = {};
let responsePicker = new ResponsePicker(trackerObject);

for (let i = 0;i < 15;i++) {
    console.log(responsePicker.pickResponse(responses));
}

console.log("Tracker object: " + JSON.stringify(trackerObject));