so, we meet again! 😁
Below, there’s a whole lot more about me and how I approach my work. Feel free to browse, or just click the shiny button below to say ‘hi’ and talk to me directly.
My intro to Conversation Design.
If you made it this far, you know my name’s Chad… (hi, hi, and hello, again! 😁)
But, if we’re meeting for the first time, I’m a business, product, and design leader, focused on conversational ai and voice. Recently, I moved back home to Texas with my husband, Stephen, and our three black cats: Lucho, Kevín, and Calor.
My career so far has led me to try and gain experience in many things such as social media, influencer marketing, website / app development, big data, and AI. Most recently, I’ve been at Google, where I’ve built and led a team of 31 in the design, development and optimization of bots (chat and voice) for Google’s largest GCP client, one of the big telcos and an icon of American business.
I developed my love of conversational ai, though, and it’s potential to reshape customer interactions with brands and transform how users interact with the the world while I was at IBM Watson Media & Weather. There, I encountered this techology when I took on a role as a Product Leader for smart speaker apps and managed teams of developers, QA engineers, visual designers, and researchers.
As my team started working with conversational AI and voice products, I looked at best practices on team structure and design methodology. I noted that our team did not have a conversation designer but needed one badly. Seeing the need and recognizing my curiosity about and interest in the technology and in conversation design, I dove in head first.
While I don’t have the background that some designers have, I do have a lifelong love of and deep experience of how to use language to communicate and tell stories: I have been a book-a-week reader since I was fifteen; I went on to study history in collage, minor in French, and squeeze in a lot of coursework in contemporary literature and political science; and, I managed to write a novel, a memoir, and take over 40 hours in creative writing instruction.
So, faced with this opportunity to be the team’s conversation designer, I decided to follow my instincts and what I knew about language and trust that I could figure things out. Combined with my work experience. I found that I could not only analyze and create content but that I really understand data, how users consume weather as a category of information, and that I was able to figure out how to interpret weather for users thru voice and conversational interfaces.
Since the MVP of Weaher’s voice skill launched, I’ve created other concepts and enhancements. All of which are conversation-first designs, and many of which are on this site. I’m excited to share them and hope you enjoy seeing and reading about them as much as I enjoyed making them. ;)
A POV on Design
Informed by my work across various disciplines, I think I have a unique position on function of the good design. Good Design creates moments of magic, but design is at its best when it finds unexpected alignment between business objectives and user needs.
Data is the app.
The line, I got from Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends report. But I think it’s true. Visually pleasing design and sound UX are (mostly) standard these days. They are required for any business to stay relevant with today’s consumers.
Longterm use of the internet has created user expectations for how tasks are accomplished. These truths make it hard for one app or brand to stand out from one another. Shopping experiences form recognizable patterns. Consumer banking apps have certain features and functionality that are common to all such apps, etc.
Data is never the same. Data is the differentiator. And, data is element that can, when used ethically and appropriately, cement a relationship between a brand and its customers.
Apps and brands that can access, acquire, retain, and make good and responsible use of data are tomorrow’s winners. I start every design initiative by trying to understand not only business drivers and core user journeys but with data. I align with team members and to contribute to a thorough review of available transcripts, inbound customer services requests, CRM databases.. you name it. The more that we can make use of a brand’s data — its real competitive advantage with regard to customer retention and engagement — the better we can meet user expectations and drive results.
But first let’s talk.
Interface design has evolved as a discipline to serve visual interfaces. The sensory inputs it requires are visual as the user navigates an app or website to complete tasks or find information. Conversational interfaces, however, present a different challenge
Consider, for a second, what a user has to do in any interaction with a computer. They have to read or scroll and process a mixture of language and imagery to figure out how to get started. Chat interfaces retain visual inputs and maybe context (depending on where the chat app is located. With voice, With a conversation, the user just has to know what content is in scope and ask a question.
Consider, for another second: what users bring to a conversation and what bots brings to a conversation. Humans bring a full facility with language and use talk, as the conversation analyst Elizabeth Stokoe says, ‘to get every facet of life accomplished.’ Bots, on the other hand, bring what we program to ‘know’ and engage human interlocutors the ways we as conversation designers prescribe. What we might be doing here is creating a simulacrum of conversation with a set of tools and methods that will inevitably fail if not properly and meticulously constructed.
Consider, for longer than a second: the power of getting conversation right. A bot is not a substitute for a person, but it can heighten a user’s emotional response and engagement when done right. To paraphrase Ms Stokoe again, humans look at talk and their experiences in conversations to understand who a person or brand is. And, we come with this feature, this ability to assess talk and conversational experiences. So, when conversational experiences fail, the user is frustrated with the app but forms judgments about the kind of company they’re interacting with.
Good user experience and interface design is the price of admission. Good conversation design is the value-add and the means to effectively manage customer’s impressions of brand to attract sales, build loyalty, etc.
And make it mean something.
So, conversation design helps the ‘warm and fuzzies’. All very fine, good, and important from a business’ point-of-view, when it acquires a new customer or keeps a customer happy. But, I think there’s another layer here, and, no, I’m not talking about persona.
Persona is the kind of thing think-pieces and blog posts are written about without (always) a lot of consideration for what it means. As we’ve seen, the proper construction and successful interaction itself constructs your bot’s character. Persona can influence how you position the bot and engage with users. Establishing the bot’s interaction style if you will. But I’m thinking of something more fundamental here: relevance.
Relevance was the most cited criteria in the rigorous testing me and my team with users for The Weather Channel. And relevance (or lack thereof) is a frequently cited means with my Google teams in determining whether a bot is meeting expectations.
By relevance, I think we’re beyond style points and sound fundamentals that show the bot understands how a conversation work. Here, we’re talking about the bot’s ability to use all available data and create a mashup that applies the right data within the right context and within a conversation that’s well constructed and has style to make the user feel seen, understood, and embraced by the experience. & with that, friends: 🎤💧
🤪🤓😃😃