Disclosure certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

x.ai shifted meeting preference setup from conversational text to web UI

Dennis Mortensen · 5 Key Learnings About Intelligent Agents // Dennis Mortensen, x.ai (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC) · Jan 17, 2019 · at 10:33

Dennis Mortensen, founder and CEO of x.ai, shares product design learnings from building an AI scheduling assistant.

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“We initially implemented it against the idea that you would set your preferences over the conversational UI. Like, ah, I really like meetings on Monday. I come in a little bit late. I need to leave early on Fridays. Got to pick up the kids. And a whole long idea of kind of writing that out. That's not really what you want. Probably want a couple of sliders to kind of tell me when you're available to do meetings.”

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