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Conversation Design

Conversation Design

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Conversation Design

What is Conversation Design?

The way we live, work and manage business has been transformed by technology.

And with voice as a new technological development, being able to own the conversation with machines and AI-enhanced products is now a must in any field of business.

There are an infinite number of possibilities for humans to express themselves and derive meaning from the context of conversations; conversation designers teach machines how to engage in meaningful and goal-oriented conversation in various fields of business, like in Telecommunications, Automotive, Insurance, Finance, Consumer Household and Appliances, Health or Media.

Group 18

Swisscom Voice Assistant

  • #Voice Design
  • #Sound Design
  • #Voice UX

Swisscom's Voice Assistant is revolutionizing the telco industry for Swiss customers.

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Why Conversation Design?

Meaning and guidance

Conversational user interfaces need professional conversation design and linguistic training to distinguish meaning and provide guidance in understanding the complexity of human conversation.

Voice UX Design tries to bridge the gap between two very different conversational partners, human, and machine, and let them understand each other.

More than textual output

Conversation design is more than textual output for conversational interfaces – it handles complex human-machine interaction and simplifies it with good voice UX. This design process needs experts.

We bring Charisma to Conversation Design

At VUI.agency, we are fascinated by language and the art of human conversation: these interests are the basis and methodology for our conversation design. To have a conversation, you need to understand your conversational partner.

The conversation is not only about verbal interaction; it involves listening, silence, and non-verbal signals (like visual feedback and gestures) or sounds to indicate acknowledgment or disagreement.

It’s also about the right level of politeness and explicitness, the right tone of voice, and even word choice – especially when it comes to virtual assistants and automated conversations.

We strive for charismatic Conversational AI and premium Voice UX in all our projects.

How we approach premium conversation design

Conversation Design or Conversational AI Design are still very new fields of expertise. To us, it is ‘the art of designing conversations by having conversations’. That’s what we do. At VUI.agency we like to cover the core areas of conversation design to achieve the best Voice UX possible.

VUI.agency – Conversation Design – Infographic showing componants of a good conversation design

Persona Design

One of the main pillars of conversation design is persona design. Since we deal with conversations, 'persona design' here refers to two different kinds of persona design. On the one hand, the voice persona design helps profile user groups and their language, so they are understood on multiple levels.

And on the other hand, the assistant persona design aims at charismatic conversational AI, or virtual assistants that perfectly represent your brand and engage in conversation with users successfully.

Flow Design

It might appear easy to design conversations – after all, most of us can speak and have meaningful conversations every day.

But flow design is complex because a machine cannot widely and spontaneously derive meaning from an everyday conversation. So, the job of conversation designers is to prepare for as many conversational flows as possible decisively.

This process also involves designing the proper response to users to keep the conversation alive and reach the user’s goal. Our flow design combines an academic and specific understanding of linguistics with a solid design-thinking approach. We consider both critical for a fulfilling user experience and their acceptance of that digital conversational partner.

Read our blog article

From function to person: why persona design is an integral part of voice assistants.

  • #VUI Design
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Prompt Design

With the right choice of machine response, users are encouraged to speak naturally – and thus provide valuable training data for the future. It allows them to communicate naturally and interact intuitively with the voice assistant.

We like to design the right prompt for every occasion and conversational context. Our prompt design follows your Conversational Branding and your Conversational AI Strategy and expresses the charisma of your assistant persona.

Utterance Design

In a team full of linguists, utterance design is more than providing training data.

We train different rule-based or machine learning (ML) systems with input conveying language diversity and understanding users. We envision a Conversational AI that avoids bias and brings both accessibility and inclusivity.

Sound Design

Sound design often covers a range of non-verbal signals in comparison to human conversation. It enhances the voice UX and crucially contributes to intuitive conversations. Sound design can express when something goes wrong.

You can replace speech and shorten the interaction to trigger an emotion. It can let a user hear what they cannot see. We think voice UX and sound UX naturally belong together when it comes to charismatic Conversational AI.

Sound in Voice User Interfaces – a Sound Architect’s perspective

  • #Sound Design
Discover blog article

Visual Design

Visual references in conversation design are comparable to gestures and mimics in human conversations. Our voice UX designers follow a multimodal approach to ensure intuitive interaction. Integrating speech with TV screens, smartphones, or displays of smart speakers.

Together, we follow a holistic approach in our work and every new project. For us, visual design means deciding when the visual channel replaces or supports the voice channel and finding the right combination of graphical and voice user interface design to support the entire user journey.

At VUI.Agency, we are voice experts, but we understand the importance of visuals when developing for the best conversational user experience. So visual design is crucial to our holistic approach and indicative of our commitment to deliver that premium user experience.

But enough of all the Design Thinking.
Let’s have a conversation about the design you need.