People + Bots = ❤

A few years ago, Animal Crossing New Leaf saved me from the pit of despair called burnout. Here’s the backstory, but the tl;dr is that the game’s onboarding process felt like such a joyful and precious conversation that it fundamentally altered my entire approach to design.

I realized designing conversational experiences was a craft with long-term business value. When combined with the *right* infrastructure, it was magic. And the video game industry has billions of dollars and massive player engagement to prove it. Hollywood, too — it all starts with a script.

What’s the future of conversations in the Internet of Things? Voices and bot-driven conversations wherever we are.

So being *there* — that is, everywhere — is vital to be supportive of customers AND competitive as a business.

But what differentiates just being there and being there in delightful ways is the humanity in our conversations.

I’m fascinated by how to achieve this, especially at scale. It’s a never-ending technology, data, and design challenge chock full of empathy, anthropology, morality, and reality. And a lot of hard work.

Fortunately, I’m surrounded by people who also are fascinated by this current- and future-state opportunity. So we’re getting together on February 28, 2017, in SF to host a 1-day conference talking about all that goes into designing humanity in AI and conversational UI’s.

That event is called Humanity.ai. People from Pixar, IBM, and Facebook will share what they’ve learned.

And you’re invited.

PS: Register with code “steph” to save 15%.