Conversational Design / Conversational UX

With the rise in demands of chatbots and voice assistants, there was and still is an issue of chatbots sounding too much like robots and less like humans. This contributes to a poor user experience. This is where Conversation design comes to the rescue. Conversation design makes chatbots and voice assistants more helpful, natural, and persuasive when they talk to users. Conversational Design more commonly referred to as Conversation Design is the process of designing a language for AI assistants with a human tone for them more helpful for the users by making them more human and more understandable.

Conversational UX Design

What is Conversational Design?

Conversational Design more commonly referred to as Conversation Design is the process of designing a language for AI assistants with a human tone to them more helpful for the users by making them more human and more understandable. Conversation design is a best practice followed by most of the organizations that have AI assistants as a product for making the conversation between the AI assistants and the user similar to a conversation between two humans, this significantly reduces the cognitive load on the user and makes the process simpler and easier to understand.

Conversation design is all about understanding the limitations and capabilities of both the artificial and the human brain so as a conversation designer we need to understand technology, psychology, and copywriting. so a conversation designer is expected to know a lot of micro-skills and learn certain methods that will help you perform and create better experiences.

How to create Conversational Designs?

Step 1. Requirements:

We start out with knowing the requirements for the design. The first step is all about asking the right questions, In this step we want to look the following questions:

• Are we technically capable of automating the conversations?
• What are the conversations that we are going to be automating?
• Which conversations are we going to be having?
• Who are we going to be having these conversations with?
• Who is going to be having these conversations on our behalf?

Step 2. Creating the bot personality:

The next step is to create a personality for our Chat Bot or AI assistant or whatever product we are designing this conversation for. This Steps requires a conversational copywriter who excels in conversational copywriting and protects that natural tone of voice that is being created.

Step 3. Creating a flow chart:

The job of a flow chart is to mind map the direction of conversation. Map out where the conversation will go for example when the user uses inappropriate words or asks the same question over and over again. At the end of this step we will have a sample dialog which has been being turned into a flow chart.

Step 4. Validate:

Now the text and the flow chart is validated through a “Wizard of Oz” test and whatever issues are their with the text are than improved through an expert rewrite. The Experts job is to figure out what are the issues with the flowchart if it underperforms in the tests and improve those.

Step 5. Review from Stakeholders and iterate:

After multiple Expert rewrites and improvements, the flow chart is then sent to the stakeholders for approval. The Stakeholders may be the product owners, business owners or somebody who we are creating the Chat Bot/AI assistant for. After getting it review by the stakeholders, make appropriate changes to the workflow and iterate untill a close to perfect Conversational Design is obtained.

Applications of Conversation Design

Chat Bots:

Conversational design finds it’s biggest use case in Chat Bots. Chat Bots can be used anywhere, for example customer service is an obvious use case of Chatbots but we can also use them for sales and persuasion. Every chat bot requires a conversational designer to come up with the tone of the language.

Voice assistance:

Conversation design is crucial for making Voice assistance sound a bit more natural. Not just Voice assistants but everything voice related needs a conversation designer to create a good experience for the users.

Robotics:

There are many applications for AI and Robotics and every time they interact with a human they are going to need a conversation designer to make that experience a bit more natural and a bit more friendly. By setting a human tone between any conversation, it becomes simpler for the user to understand what’s happening on the screen.

E-learning and Training:

Other than Chatbots and AI Assistance, Conversational design finds an important application in E learning and Training. With a proper conversation design, e-learning platforms can enhance their various features that involves conversations between the application and learner (for example, doubt assistants).

Smart Devices:

Devices like smart speakers and home automation systems also require a more humane language and tone for the users to have a better experience with the product. Specially, when some error occurs, the conversation design makes the Devices sound more empathic.

Parameter Designing:

Contrary to what comes in people’s minds when they hear of Conversational Design, Conversational Designing is not just about writing all the dialogues for a Chatbot/AI assistant, but a Conversational Designer also holds the job of setting and designing the parameters within which AI can operate making it an important use case of Conversational Design.

Conclusion

With conversational design you not only design the language tone on the conversation but also designing the parameters within which AI can operate and hence conversational design directly impacts not only the user interface and experience but also the overall functionally for the product. Conversation design is all about understanding the limitations and capabilities of both artificial and the human brain so as a conversation designer we need to understand technology, psychology and copywriting. We hope that this article helped you improve your understanding on what Conversational Design is.