Conversation As Interface —Landscape & Future of Mobile Design

3 min readDec 30, 2015

There’s an important trend happening right now where messaging & communication is becoming central to the interfaces and apps we design. Siri, Slack, Google Now, Whats App, Facebook M — these are just the tip of the iceberg. The trend is being pushed by a few different aspects: ubiquity of mobile devices, advances in AI & ease of supporting chat interfaces from a development perspective.

I gave this company-wide presentation to Dow Jones & The Wall Street Journal in October on the future to communicate thoughts on how this trend of conversational interfaces is evolving, and its implications for mobile design, and media brands in particular.

I wrote an earlier post on the topic, but this presentation goes in more depth on why the trend is significant. There’s an overview of the current product/tech landscape, and research and thinking on the topic.

(Videos don’t embed in Speaker Deck so I’ve included them below, along with some speaker notes, & sources I included in the presentation).

Follow me on Twitter @nicolaerusan for more thoughts on product design, product management, entrepreneurship & futurism.

Videos

Speaker Notes I Jotted For Myself

Social Networks (1-many broadcast) vs. Messaging Apps ( 1–1 Personal Communication)

On Facebook or Twitter you post to all your followers the same message. With Messaging apps you have the opportunity to send a unique message to every single person your brand interacts with.
For Media, that means you have the opportunity to really develop a deep understanding of a users Interest Profile & Context, and deliver them incredibly relevant content.
Personalization at Scale. What will be the tools here?
Early days for Brands engaging users on these apps in the US. Sophistication will improve over time.

Communication is Central, important to consider who we talk to

Talk To: Friends & Family

Personal conversations have been around in email & SMS, and now moving into these various messaging apps that have far more conversation.

Many of these apps appear as a result of a constraint. E.G. Calling -> Viber. International Text Messages -> Whats App. Email Overload -> Slack
These expand the interface possibilities further for each medium.

Talk To: New People (Dating & Jobs)

In terms of the new innovation here — the idea of the Double Opt-In as a way to open up a channel of communication. Only match if both say yes (what’s this mechanism called?)

Talk To: Coworkers

Slack demonstrated how central communication is to human organization, and its becoming the backbone of enterprises that other applications build on — modern IRC/Sharepoint

Talk To: Brands

Brands are engaging customers in Messaging Apps, and also on their own websites (e.g. customer support chats on Amazon etc.). I’m a huge advocate of throwing chat functionality on to your site as a way to engage with your customers and have a better understanding of how they use your product.

Talk To: Experts

Talk to: AI

Ross is a product by IBM that is an AI lawyer you can consult with.
The movie Her showed a future where people get companionship from talking to AI and Microsoft’s Chatbot Xiaoice in China is demonstrating that people actually look to do this.

One aspect of voice vs. Text is Synchronous vs. Async