The AI Guru works to provide a highly tailored learning experience to Users across any team, by creating opportunities to improve performance using real-world scenarios and coaching Users on best practices for solution-giving. AI guru achieves this while giving clear and trusted answers, based on industry knowledge and professional sources.
The AI Guru focuses on key areas of achievement: two examples of which being…
Primary User Goals: these cover a range of wants and needs, for all user types, some examples including…
Handling objections (Customer teams)
Learning processes and tools quickly (New Joiners)
Reducing errors and rework (Operations or Finance)
Performance reviews (Leadership)
Explaining complex concepts simply (Product or Tech)
Closing skill gaps with measurable progress (L&D or HR)
Business Goal: To enhance employee skill development, bridge knowledge/experience gaps within teams, improve performance in key job functions, and support career growth.
We'll take a look at how to get started by look at creating your organisation's AI Guru, and what learners can expect when interacting with it.
Create A Guru
You can access the Guru Studio via the content creation shortcut (+) button, or directly from the HowNow Studio.
A list of all Guru's you've created will be accessible via the Guru option under Studio, on the Dashboard panel. These Gurus can be edited or deleted, and will always have the Date Created and current publication Status.
Within the Guru Studio, you’ll be able to design a truly bespoke learning experience, by structuring the fundamentals of the AI Guru. From the topics it will help users address, to the crafted approach it takes to nurture your User’s understanding.
Getting started with the creation mode, there are two sections: the creation panel and the preview screen.
CREATION PANEL
The learning requirements for your Guru, along with its distinct personality will be decided by the following fields…
Name: This represents what the Guru specialises in - giving it an identity, but also ensuring Users understand right away, what they can expect.
Context and Purpose: What is this Guru designed to do? What themes and areas of the business will it cover? What are we upskilling our User in? These questions plus more, are necessary for your AI to have a focal point, making the learning relevant and covering all areas.
The Enhance Prompt button (found in the bottom-right corner of this field) will optimise the Context and Purpose you entered to help you create a better Guru.
Skills Developed: When it comes to the Skills your Users are enhancing, the AI Guru is no different from the content also assigned to those Users. Letting them know which Skills the Guru will be targeting, helps your team members to track their learning and update their expertise.
Add up to 10 Skills to your AI Guru that match with the topics and themes added in your Context and Purpose field.
The Skills Developed field is essential for letting Users know which Skills they’ll be improving as part of their Job Role. Learning with AI Guru means that Skills Gaps will be easily minimised, leading to team members becoming the Experts, on key topics for their department, or perhaps the entire business.
Tip💡: Encourage Users with improved Skill Levels, to test this new knowledge by partaking in coaching sessions and answering quizzes, with the AI Guru.
This ensures they maintain this new knowledge and can cause positive reinforcement, so they push to get to an even higher Skill Level.
Now that the reasoning behind the Guru has been shaped, it’s this next step that we begin to truly mould the learning design of the AI. To do this, you’ll move on to structuring the following three key components…
Knowledge Base
There are various forms of content that can be uploaded to your AI Guru Knowledge Base…
My Content: this includes the options of your internal HowNow content, HowNow+ courses, learning that comes From the Web, and content from Harvard Business Review.
HowNow: includes content that exists within your workspace, that has Visibility set to ‘everywhere’ or ‘only in existing content’.
The first/direct Existing Content inside a Nugget or Course Lesson will be picked up by Guru, and not an Existing Content inside an Existing Content, etc.
HowNow+: the Author can include content from a range of HowNow+ providers, as long as it's been imported to your organisation's workspace (via the Dashboard > Apps page).
The list of such providers include: SkillsHub, Assemble You, Mind Tools, Bigger Brains, Mindscaling , Future Think, Access Group, Study Academy, VinciWorks, Talaera, and isEazy.
Harvard Business Review (HBR): Quality content from the prime leader in business, leadership and professional education materials.
From the Web: showcases all available third-party content types (you can manage providers via the Apps page).
Note✨: Important points to note for My Content, include the following...
Only Nuggets and Courses will be available as learning resources for your Guru, as other standard content types can’t provide any tangible learning for the AI to work from, for example a Live Class).
Courses that consist exclusively of Assessments, are not part of the Knowledge Base.
Whenever a new Lesson is added to a content item (e.g., a Course), this is then automatically added to the Guru's Knowledge Base. It will run a sync for new material each time Guru is in Creation Mode.
2. Upload: If you have content from outside of HowNow, you can use the Upload option to add these at a maximum file size of 200MB.
You can upload files in the formats of: C, CPP, CS, CSS, DOC, DOCX, GO, HTML, JAVA, JS, JSON, MD, PDF, PHP, PPTX, PY, RB, SH, TEX, TS and TXT.
The Content Added section will confirm the material has been added to your AI Guru’s Knowledge Base, and can be removed at any time.
3. URLS: Your AI Guru will contextualise any written content featured on the linked site, and use that to provide answers, fact check and improve how it gives examples. A useful option if your Guru is to specialise in a specific product, or industry.
Note✨: When using HowNow URLs, Guru will still collect information from the content it reads on the linked page, but exclude any of that page's embedded documents, files, videos or further links.
YOUTUBE VIDEOS AS KNOWLEDGE
Any YouTube video URL that gets added to the Knowledge Base, will automatically have its live captions stored, to hold all of the information found within the video. If there are no live captions, then the video is transcribed instead.
Blocked or private videos won't be uploaded to Guru, and a failure message will be given.
Upon using the option to Deep Dive on the topic covered by your YouTube link, there'll not only be extensive information, easily re-explained from the video, but also the video itself embedded, and showing it as the Source of the information.
You'll learn more about Deep Dives and reviewing the Source, further into this support article.)
Coaching Style
Here we’ll see four styles of coaching to choose from - each giving creators the opportunity to cater to their User’s preferred modes of learning. Are they receptive to structured steps? Perhaps a more empathetic/emotive angle?
Socratic Guide:Guided Reflection / Question-based
Perfect for… Users who enjoy debates, tackling pre-conceived ideas on subjects, and autonomous learning.
Learners who enjoy challenging their existing knowledge and new theory using open-ended questions. This style encourages critical thinking and delves into topics by taking a “So what does that lead to? What does it tell us?” approach.
Directive Coach: Actionable Guidance / Structured Support
Perfect for… Users who have a very linear approach to learning, and avoid jumping between steps at random. They like task-based ‘homework’.
Taking Users on a direct path from the beginning, to an end result, is the core of this style. It gives your team members the ability to use frameworks that take a step-by-step approach, where they can see the tangible actions required to get the results they need.
Structured Mentor:Strategic Guidance / Structured Mentorship
Perfect for… Users who already know what they want their goal to be. Team members transitioning from junior roles to senior ones.
Ideal for long-term achievements, this style can take Users from novice to highly skilled, by providing learning concepts based heavily on industry best practices. A step-by-step process is also part of this coaching style.
SupportiveFriend: Relatable / Encouraging
Perfect for…Users who are new to their role, or younger team members who may need to take on responsibilities that may feel overwhelming, for their level of experience.
Here is where empathetic interaction brings out the confidence in your Users. The language used by the AI Guru revolves around positive reinforcement, and using compassion to encourage Users to try looking at intricate ideas, in different ways.
Note✨: If no coaching style is selected for your AI Guru, then it will automatically apply Supportive Friend and Directive Coaching.
Roleplay Scenarios
It’s been proven by learning experts that putting theory into practice, can significantly improve employee performance as they review unexpected outcomes, and create new solutions to sudden changes.
This is where the Roleplay Scenarios option comes in: you can use either the AI Suggested Scenarios or the Add Scenarios options that your AI Guru will work with, when creating conversations, and posing questions to your User in real-time.
The AI Guru will roleplay realistic conversations, by…
Replying with unexpected statements, to pressure-test user response.
Focusing on behaviours and decisions exclusive to the situation given.
Testing Users’ emotional intelligence by displaying moments of frustration, urgency, etc.).
Starting with simple scenarios, later moving into more complex cases.
Recognising the User’s performance in the roleplay, and adjusting the level accordingly.
AI Suggested Scenarios: curated based on the information provided in the Context and Purpose field, these suggested scenarios will always come with two different options to choose from. Once selected they’ll appear in a list below. You can edit them at any time, to add further info on what exactly should be covered.
If unsatisfied with the suggestions, you can always refresh the box, to see two newer options.
Add Scenarios: When creating your own scenarios, it’s important to make them detailed enough, so that they target the areas your User needs to be challenged on. What is the plot? What roles do the User and Guru have? What is the blocker and how must the User overcome it?
PREVIEW MODE
Here as the creator, you’ll be able to experience your AI Guru, as if you were assigned to it, as a User. You can take a quiz, start a practice scenario and ask it for advice around your role or the theme it’s been designed for.
Just like all Preview mode content on HowNow, your actions won’t reflect on Dashboard analytics.
Assign Users
You can assign users by selecting the assignment option on the top panel. This will open the assignment pop-up, where you can use the generic assignment approach, or add Custom Rules, for specific Users, to gain access.
Learn with your Guru
Once your User has been assigned to the Guru, they can begin interacting with it, via the AI Guru section on their Homepage side panel. The Guru option will only appear, whenever a User is assigned to its Learning Mode.
INTRODUCING ITSELF
Upon first contact with the AI Guru, Users can trigger an introduction by simply using prompts like "I need help" and "what can I learn today?" - even a simple "Hi". This will then lead to the Guru providing the learning options available, between the following:
Start a Learning Session/ Deep Dive
Roleplay Scenario
Quiz
Skill Review
STARTING A LEARNING SESSION / DEEP DIVE
If the User already knows what they want to focus on, then they can submit their interest, to start a general learning session, which will start with a deep dive into the topic submitted. For example: "I want to learn about Product Design Fundamentals."
This will spring the Guru into action, by providing a comprehensive breakdown of the topic, segmenting it into sequential categories.
The information will be scrollable within an embedded screen, within the chat itself, which can be expanded at any time. No matter how far along in the chat the User ends up, they can always find this embedded screen in their chat.
Within the text, exist hyperlinked keywords, that dive even further into a vital sub-topic, within the lesson. Users can click these to open another pop-up card, layered on top of the original chat. These will continue to layer, with the User always being able to close each one), to return to the previous layer (or use the close-all-tabs option), until eventually returning to the original chat.
Users can then continue the deep dive into the same topic, by selecting the given option (sometimes presented by the Guru), or simply express their interest, with the same topic. It will provide detailed principles, facts and best practice on another area of the same topic, not covered in the previous deep dive pop-up (shown above).
Note✨: There will always be a Source option showcasing how many original cited resources have been used, to provide the information within the Deep Dive, and upon clicking this, a pop-up will open allowing Users to visit the source(s) directly.
Afterwards, if the User scrolls down, there will be a series of other learning options given to the User, to continue the learning journey. These will relate to the four bullet-points mentioned previously: the other learning options to experience.
JOB ROLE CONTEXTUALISATION
A key feature of the learning experience within Guru, is its ability to provide a learning experience tailored to a user's Job Role.
Based on the given Job Role, Users will receive answers with examples from the perspective of the User's responsibilities, and the industry-standard expectations set for someone in their role.
For example...
Sales Manager: Guru would include references to sales pipelines, customer calls, quota management and more, as it recognises the goals and day-to-days of a Sales Manager, specifically.
Software Engineer: Coding, debugging, and design-related examples would be given as part of a software engineering Job Role.
A personalised, professionally-grounded learning experience is given to Users, thanks to AI Guru understanding how a Job Role can navigate within different themes (think: A Marketing Director asking for best practices when presenting to C-Suite, versus a Big Data Analyst asking for the same thing).
Note✨: It's important to recognise the following points...
Job Role Contextualisation will be actionable via Guru's Deep Dives, Quizzes and Roleplays.
It will provide stronger results when used for practicing/asking about soft skills (leadership, empathy, etc.), and less so for hard skills (JavaScript, Final Cut Pro etc.)
ROLEPLAY SCENARIO
With the Roleplay Scenario, Users can improve their ability to discuss to stakeholders how a process works, pitch the unique selling points of a product, and test difference ways to manage being challenged about their opinions.
It's during these Roleplays that Users will receive feedback, in real-time, explaining ways in which they can add more to their proposal, or perhaps approach research from a different angle.
Note✨: You always Resume or Restart a Roleplay session, after closing its screen, back to the main Guru chat.
QUIZ
In the form of a colour-card at the top of the chat (or by simply asking the AI for it), the Quiz allows your team members to test their current level of knowledge, by being given a series of multiple choice questions (MCQs) or True/False. All questions are based on the Knowledge Base content provided by the Creator, and will always be out of 10.
Users will be able to answer a series of questions, with both their correct or incorrect answers given context as to why they are good or not so good choices. The aim of the Quiz is to get your Users to understand the reasoning behind their choices.
Positioned in the top-left corner, you’ll notice the Quiz Timer. This countdown will always be 15 seconds for each question. Whenever a User fails to answer in time, the correct answer is automatically shown, while being marked as “Missed”.
If your User closes the Quiz, this will put it on pause, where they can return to it later, picking up from where they left off.
Once completed, Users will always be able to view their answers, with the AI Guru providing a sleek breakdown of their strengths, and also where knowledge gaps are present. Your Users will then be encouraged to work on this learning, by being given options to tackle other themes, based on how well they did on the test.
SKILLS REVIEW
The option to review your Skills will always appear in the form of a content card, but only if Skills have been added in Creation Mode.
Users can also request the AI Guru grant them the ability to review their own Skills, from the chat. This interface will be different to the one shown, via the Skills page.
Users will be presented only with the Skills associated with this Guru, and not any other Skills they hold. They can hover over the Skill Level to see a pop-up of the definitions for the Skill and make their selection, which will then push across the next Skills until they're all reviewed.
Once your User has reviewed their Skills within the Guru, those same Skills will automatically appear within their Skills page, and then captured via the Dashboard analytics, for Managers/Admins.
If the User has reached the set Target Level for any of those Skills, then they will receive a small pop-up notification (in the bottom right-corner of the screen), letting them know of this achievement.
Note✨: Points to note, for Skills Review, include the following...
If the Creator has removed Skills from the AI Guru, after the User has already completed a review, then the User won’t see the card at the beginning of the chat. It only remains if the card is the only one that hasn’t been interacted with yet, and no chat has been started - it cannot be disabled by the Creator.
If the User gives a Level 5 review, for each of the Skills presented, then the Guru won't showcase it's listed feedback.
The Skills added by the Creator, will always be the ones used for a Guru-based Skills Review.
If there are no Skills added to the Guru, then no Skills Review option will be given/shown. Instead, a text box will explain that doing a Skill Review is therefore not possible, with Guru giving an alternative action for the User to do next.
Guru Skill Level Ratings (for Self-Ratings) will always override Self-Ratings done from elsewhere on the Platform. For example...
Hank is a Level 3 in Design on his Skills Profile
Hank does a Skills Review via Guru > now a Level 5
This Level 5 is updated on his Skills Profile now
VOICE MODE
Users will always have learning preferences. This is why the Voice Mode exists within the AI Guru experience.
Clicking on the square icon (located on the right side of the response bar), will take Users to the Voice Mode screen.
This will show the audio-frequency visual (used to symbolise the AI Guru's voice), as soon as you begin a conversation. This can be done by selecting the microphone icon.
From here, Users can interact with the Guru and start improving on their Skills, by asking direct questions, or perhaps testing their ability to perform under pressure (think: interviewing or showcasing ideas).
The same information that can be learned from the written chat with Guru - such as Quizzes, Roleplays and Deep Dives - can still be experienced using conversational learning, for Users who prefer a more vocal-auditory approach.
Voice Mode also offers the ability to switch between 30+ global languages, mid-conversation.
For example...
Eddie has an important pitch to give to some Japanese investors.
He can ask Guru to give him some pointers to improve his Japanese-for-business (these given to him in English).
Then ask the Guru to run a practice drill with him, conversing in Japanese, only.
This conversation would then be summarised onto one of the chat cards, once the Voice Mode is ended (by clicking "X"). The card will showcase the main points that were covered during the conversation, and key takeaways for the User, before providing follow-up actions, based on the chat.
Below is an example of a summary card for a Roleplay, used to practice a product presentation in Spanish.
Core Behaviours and Traits of the AI Guru
Although the AI Guru holds a series of different Coaching Styles, and will adapt to the tone and direction of conversations with the User, it still has core behaviours that are built-in. The following include…
Using the User’s Job Role and both current and target Skill Levels, to personalise learning.
Responding to match the depth of a User’s enquiry.
Keep a track of conversations to continue later on, with the same tone and themes of the session.
End sessions with next steps or action points for Users to work towards.
Use of inclusive language: referring to Users in first person, and characters in second person.
Communicating in a variety of natural phrases: conversational, active listening to user’s responses and even with humour used appropriately.
Intelligent conversation management: highlighting missing Skill Levels, flagging it’s been a long time since the last interaction, etc.
Ability to perform spaced repetition teaching techniques to help the User retain information.
NOTIFICATIONS
Email and web app notifications will be sent to the Creator, based on the following actions:
Content included in the AI Guru Knowledge Base is deleted from the workspace
Skills included in the Skills Developed field are deleted from the Skills page
Email and web app notifications will be sent to Users once assigned to the Guru, along with via Slack and MS Teams (if integrated).
LANGUAGE LOCALISATION
Field names within the Creation Mode, and the Edit/Delete button options, will be localised into your chosen language (based on your Language settings).
The content written into fields, by the Creator, nor the content included in the Knowledge Base will be localised/translated.
As shown previously, the Learning Mode can accommodate various languages via the Voice Mode, but this can also be applied via the main text chat.
Giving commands in your target language, will lead the Guru to respond back in that same language.
REPORTING & STUDIO DRAFTS
Under the Content page tab, via the Dashboard panel, the Guru page shows the list of all currently published Guru's, across the entire organisation's workspace.
FAQS
Content Format Supported: It seems that Guru struggles to accurately interpret images (like PNGs, pasted diagrams, or multi-column text). Is that normal that the Guru can't make sense of text within images?
Guru can interpret text within images that include OCR (optical character recognition). If the image doesn’t have OCR or if the text is embedded as part of the image itself, Guru won’t be able to read or understand it accurately.
Does Guru share original documents uploaded into it as a Nugget?
The Guru doesn’t directly share or promote the original document. It interprets the content stored within the Guru and uses that to generate relevant answers. It does, however, cite the specific content it relied on when forming the response.
Would it be possible to put two very deep topics within one Guru? Two quite different ones — or would the Guru get mixed up between the topics?
Yes, it’s possible to include two deep topics within one Guru by adding both sets of content in Creator Mode. However, if the topics are very different, the Guru might occasionally mix them up during extended conversations.
Can you add a Collaborator?
Currently, there can only be one Creator, however Collaborators will be included as part of future developments.
How does Guru handle dealing with situations/questions that it isn't trained on?
Guru will state that it does not have context on the topic raised.