Tips for writing your background

Try some of these tips to see how it affects your suggest responses!

Table of contents

Alek uses a combination of your background, the current conversation, and whatever you have typed in the text box to suggest different responses. Making changes to your background can have a big impact on the suggested responses.

Don't be afraid to change your background often. There is no downside to changing your background - don't be afraid to change it frequently to see how it changes your suggested responses.

At these early stages of Alek, we're still learning the best ways to use it - the advice on this page may not even be correct, so feel free to ignore it, try something else, and let us know how it goes!

Keep it in the third person

It's important to write your background in the 'third person', so write it as if someone else is describing your background. Use your first name and words like their, hers or his. Alek will get confused if you use "I" or "my".

  • Avoid: "I like to watch Netflix, but my favourite thing to do is go to the movie cinema."
  • Recommended: "Daniel likes to play squash, and his favourite thing is to visit the movie cinema."

Be blunt and to the point

Alek doesn't mind if you're very direct or blunt with your background - in fact it's probably better. You can write a lot more with a lot less effort if you just focus on the explicit point you want to make. You also don't necessarily need to include a lot of details, just focus on the high level point and make that clear - Alek can infer the rest!

  • Avoid: "Daniel often likes to get his laptop out, sit on the couch, and watch Netflix. Having said that, his actual favourite thing to do is go out to the movie cinema and watch it on the big screen"
  • Recommended: "Daniel often watches Netflix, but he prefers the movie cinema."
  • Avoid: "Daniel has lots of people in his family. He has a mum, a dad, and a sister. Daniel's mum is called Jane, his sister is called Alice, and his dad is called Dave."
  • Recommended: "Daniel's mum is called Jane, his sister is called Alice, his dad is called Dave."

Only include things that are relevant to your conversations

You don't need to write your life story if you don't often refer to it. Anything you write in the background may end up being used in a suggested response, so try to keep it limited to things that are recent or that you specifically want to talk about.

  • Avoid: "When Daniel was 5, he had a really funny story happen to him... <4-5 sentences on this funny story>"
  • Recommended: "Daniel is working on Alek, an app for people with speech disabilities. Alek will be released soon."
  • Recommended: "Daniel just finished reading Game of Thrones."

Add context for your current conversation

If you know in advance that you're going to have a slightly different conversation, say with your doctor, or a builder coming to visit the house, you can add that context to the bottom of your background. This will have a significant impact on your conversation and giving appropriate responses. It's even better if you include the name of the person, and then in your conversation you put the same name.

  • Recommended: "Daniel is about to meet with his builder, Bob, to discuss a kitchen renovation."

Describe how you like to talk

By default, Alek will have quite a positive, expressive tone to the suggested responses. If you want to change the style of those responses, try including something in your background that describes how you prefer to talk! You can also use this to have a laugh with your friends and family by suggesting something that doesn't fit you at all. Finally, you can also be specific about certain words you do or don't use.

  • Recommended: "Daniel uses very simple words when he talks and doesn't like fancy descriptive words."
  • Recommended: "Daniel likes to talk like a western cowboy." (Editor's note: to clarify, I don't actually like to talk like a cowboy, but adding this to your background is very funny!)
  • Recommended: "Daniel likes to say 'hey' instead of 'hello'"

Keep experimenting

At the end of the day Alek is still very new, and so we're still learning what it can and can't do with the suggested responses. If you don't feel like the suggestions are working for you, get creative and try to change up your background. We'd love to hear about the different ideas or techniques you're using to make the suggestions better!