Conversations with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice

Product Description

Welcome to the future, where you can talk with the digital things around you: voice assistants, chatbots, and more. But these interactions can be unhelpful and frustrating―sometimes even offensive or biased. Conversations with Things teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, ethical, and human–centered—because everyone deserves to be understood, especially you.

Review

“Conversations with Things is a wonderful resource for designers working with voice. Throughout the book, Diana and Rebecca lay out a good foundation for designers to create inclusive and accessible conversations. ”
—
Regine Gilbert, author of
Inclusive Design for a Digital World, designer and educator

“Deibel and Evanhoe teach conversation design using practical, actionable examples, and in such a way that it’s a delight to read—not just another book that feels like homework.”
—
Cathy Pearl, author of
Designing Voice User Interfaces

“The UX community finally has a comprehensive but easy–to–read guide to navigate the nuanced and sometimes messy process of conversation design. ”
—
Mark C. Webster, Director of Voice and Audio Products, Adobe

“Witty in tone and full of real–life examples, Conversations with Things thoroughly covers the topic of conversation design from the basics of prompt–writing to the complexities of multimodal interactions. I highly recommend this book for experts and novices alike. ”
—
Lisa Falkson, Senior VUI Designer, Amazon

About the Author

Diana Deibel, Design Director at Grand Studio in Chicago, is a Brazilian-American award-winning writer and VUI designer with a background in fictional dialogue. She has designed multi-channel voice-first products, chatbots for healthcare, insurance and HR operations, smart speaker skills, and large IVR systems. She is a national speaker and VUI consultant who has set up voice practices for Fortune 100 companies, among others. In addition to conversational design, she has written and produced for a variety of networks and creatives including “Animal Planet” and “Blue Man Group”. She co-created two TV pilots, now in pre-development with One Bowl Productions, and has had several plays produced with the Modern-Day Griot Theatre Company in Brooklyn (under the name Diana de Souza). She loves learning, puns, and leading workshops on dialogue to help others find their voices.

Rebecca Evanhoe, author and conversation designer, has been developing technology that you talk to since 2011 at companies like Amazon Web Services, Mobiquity, and Shadow Health. She has created virtual patient characters for chat-based learning games, bots for fun and service, and interactive experiences for Alexa and Google Home platforms. Along with her experience in voice and conversation, she earned an MFA in creative writing. She teaches conversation design as a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute, and she leads workshops in a variety of writing genres, from creative to technical to UX. Her fiction can be found in the O. Henry Prize Collection, Harper’s Magazine, Vice, NOON, and Gulf Coast, among others.