Conversational Design

What makes an interaction with a digital system feel truly conversational? It’s not just being able to talk or text with a “smart” silicon pal. You need to start with the people. Taking a quick look back at the last hundred thousand years of human communication will help you take the right steps forward.

WORKSHOP

You’ll learn how to

  • Identify what makes interfaces truly conversational

  • Apply the deep principles of cooperation to any interaction, increasing utility and decreasing frustration

  • Solve problems from a human perspective, rather than creating more work for your users

  • Select the appropriate mode (reading, texting, talking, tapping) for any context of use

  • Use language to make the value you offer meaningful to your audiences

  • Give your interface just enough personality

  • Retool your workflow to better support the demands of conversational design and have fun doing it

Who it’s for

If you make interactive products for people, this workshop is for you—no matter what system you’re working with at the moment. Designers, writers, researchers, technologists—anyone who participates in creating or marketing interactive products should be in the room. How you talk with your team is part of the work.

Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.—Conway’s Law

How it works

This is a participatory remote workshop, conducted in 2 sessions with up to 20 participants. We’ll discuss your specific needs and concerns in advance, but there’s no additional preparation required.

Erika understands that great conversational AI requires so much more than great technology. Our workshop on conversational design reinforced the importance of human conversation and content design.

—Brian Bilodeau, General Manager, Cloud & AI, Microsoft

Read the book

Conversational Design is available in multiple convenient formats. You might also enjoy the related talk.