Voice This! Podcast: Bonus Episode with elaineinthebay

A day in the life of conversation designer Elaine Anzaldo

Join Millani on a new mission to uncover the person behind the brand, “elaineinthebay”. In this bonus episode, Elaine Anzaldo gives listeners the scoop on starting a career in conversation designer. From her humble beginnings in biology all the way to multimodal design at NLX, Elaine tells us her story with her usual silliness and flair, while sprinkling pieces of advice along the way.

Elaine’s Bio (updated)

Elaine Anzaldo is a seasoned Conversation Designer, having worked on voice technologies at companies such as Meta, NLX, Apple, and SRI International. As a designer for both influential voice assistants and the customer self-service industry, she has created natural conversational artifacts for voice, chat, and multimodal interfaces. Elaine is deeply passionate about designing for AI and exploring the benefits and implications of this cutting-edge technology. In her spare time, Elaine is an evangelist for Conversational AI, promoting her discipline via mentorships and articles about Conversation Design and co-producing the Voice This! Podcast and Voice This! Newsletter.

To learn more about Elaine or her work, visit her LinkedIn or Instagram.

Topics include

• [8:40] Elaine’s experience before conversational UX
• [14:20] Elaine’s experience with conversational AI in general
• [17:10] Elaine’s role at NLX as a conversational UX designer
• [20:40] Multimodal design process
• [33:50] Documentation in conversation design
• [40:00] Elaine’s attitude toward conversational AI as a consumer before working in the field
• [44:45] Ethics in conversational AI
• [50:16] Any new conversational products out there that caught your eye?
• [57:05] Smart neighborhood as an ideal future world for Elaine
• [1:01:45] Elaine advocates for sharing more among the conversational design community.
• [1:05:00] Advice for emerging conversational UX designers
• [1:14:45] Magic wand

Highlights

[17:10] Elaine’s role at NLX as a conversational UX designer

The role

Elaine: At NLX, I am their conversational UX designer. So what that means is that I cover the conversation design aspect of our products, but I also come in like with the UX viewpoint of things. Like I can step back a little bit from just being a little bit too neat and just step back and be like, overall, like what, what does this feel like? What are the interactions here, does this make sense? Like, is this too long?

So, and it comes in real handy because, our shining star product at NLX is actually multi-modal and, what multimodal means is like you are designing for a lot of different things at the same time and they all have to work together concurrently and make sense…So really in looking at things with a broader scope and a broader length is basically what I do because we’re looking at an interaction through the entire context. We are literally imagining someone going through, like, what does it look like? What are they doing? Where are they, what do they need to get done? So that’s, that’s mostly like the overview of what my job is in terms of day to day.

Be the pioneer

Elaine: NLX is a startup. I work in a startup so that means my day-to-day is crazy sometimes. I don’t know sometimes when I’m getting projects, but it’s what keeps the exciting, I guess because sometimes things will be really urgent. And they’re like, Elaine, can you take care of this? Like in a few days? Is that cool? Okay. And then I’d be like, yeah, of course. I’m perfect. Just kidding.

Millani: I love the confidence. Is that literally what you say? Like, yes, I’ll do it. I’m perfect.

Elaine: I was like yes,I’ll do it. But inside I think I’m perfect.

Millani: Confidence is key. I love it. It’s definitely an aspect we need and a mandatory requirement if you want to be a conversational designer.

Elaine: Oh yes, especially working with multimodal design. It’s actually funny because I recorded an interview with my coworker Cecilia. She used to help out a lot with some of our design projects but she comes from an instructional design background. So if you watch our interview, you actually understand designing for multi-modal is really hard for anyone actually. It’s just an entire process in itself and it feels like there are not a lot of resources out there. Most of the resources out there are like what is multimodality, and then it just stops and there’s no tips. So you need confidence as someone who works on multimodal products, you need to be like that pioneer, who makes the first mistake and makes really bad errors , and be able to come back from that and be like, let’s try better.

[20:40] Multimodal design process

Elaine: I think you’re directing this movie. You have to think of everything at the same time as how it’s going to look as a finished product. But if we’re talking about it step by step, I tried to think of the UX flow first. So I think of it like a journey, like what needs to happen here is a decision being made here.

Does each step require a new screen? Because I do design for mobile websites. So usually our voice chat is tied to one screen. But this one step could take like three different screens so we never know until we start working on it. And yeah, I, I don’t know how else to explain it other than being a movie director and having to have this crazy imagination while you’re designing.

So technically first I start with the UX flow, and then afterwards some low fidelity mock-ups, after those get shared with everyone and the team is giving me their feedback, then I’ll go back and make a high fidelity version. At that point when I’m making the high fidelity,that’s when I really start planning exactly the content on the screen and what voice chat would go with it.

I don’t actually write anything down actually at that point for the voice chat, what I do is I just like to imagine it’s a conversation and if I feel like I’m taking too long to explain what the screen is doing, then I like, I need to break this up. So my last step technically is writing the voice component to everything, but it’s in my mind the entire way through, like, I’m not forgetting it because this is a conversation, like a conversational experience and the conversational product at the end of this. So that’s super important to always have at the forefront of your mind.

So I guess for me, I like dealing with conversations first rather than voice first, just because I worked with too many different channels, too many different modalities to really advocate for one over the other. Each of them has their pros and cons and we just have to find the right balance.

[33:50] Documentation in conversation design

Elaine: This is actually really relevant to things that are happening this week at work actually, but something that I didn’t know about conversation design or didn’t really focus on it while I was studying it before entering this job, and I’ve learned this on the job, kind of like the hard way, but documentation in conversation design is a huge problem.

It’s a really big issue, like the fact that, um, you know, micro changes, like, remember I told you like the question mark versus the period can affect that overall output. Micro changes are not being tracked or it’s hard to keep track of them. And it’s hard to have what we call versioning in terms of your copy for conversation design.

I feel like a lot of platforms haven’t really figured that out…Overall I think it’s just, trying to make all of these changes and have them saved and all of the places that you need to be documenting your designs is really, really hard.

And I feel like there’s no, like one way people do it. I feel like if you asked a lot of senior conversation designers in the industry, they all kind of have like their own resources and own ways to basically trying to document everything and they’ll have different documentation, whether they’re, you know, like if it’s a meeting with stakeholders, like if they’re talking to someone who doesn’t know anything about conversational AI or conversation design, like they’ll have different documentation.

[1:05:00] Advice for emerging conversational UX designers

Learn from practitioners

Elaine: We’re talking about projects that you can do at a hackathon kind of thing, that you have like some guidance, some tutoring, and people in the industry are kind of showing you how they would do it. So those kinds of workshops or those kinds of design competitions are really, really important. I’m glad that there’s more of them now, really the conversation design, but there’s still like a really thin gap there. It’s like, I feel like there’s not enough resources for people to put things into practice.

Elaine: I’m in the middle of writing blog posts on how to learn conversation design. When I was writing it I was like uh, like if people want to actually like practice, like making a bot or a voice assistant, how do they go about doing that? And so that’s the point where you start to pay. So you either need to enroll in the bootcamp or pay for something like a workshop at a conference. And it becomes inaccessible to a lot of people. Like if you think about students, like they don’t have an employer, who’s going to sponsor them going to these conferences. So, yeah. That’s another issue.

Put theory into practice and start small

Showcase your work.

Elaine: I see a lot of people being really good at theory and not necessarily like building out something all the way through. The biggest thing in terms of getting a job as a conversation designer is you need to prove that you’ve worked on a project.

Finish one project.

Elaine: I would say if you just need to finish one project all the way through, you need to see something all the way through. And just having that as an accomplishment in itself is going to help you make more projects. And those projects are going to be even better than the first one. You literally just have to start and really force yourself to complete a project and be able to reach a point.

And what I mean by done, like, it doesn’t have to be like published on the store or something. It doesn’t have to be on the market place, but it has to be a project that you can explain. I went through all of these different designs that I went to, like their research. I did the user interviews. Um, I did my conversational flows and then I did some user testing.

You should generally cover all of those phases and be able to explain that to someone. I think that really marks something is done.

Choose a topic that interests you.

Elaine: Overall, as a tip, as a piece of advice, as someone who also started projects and I was like, I have no clue what I’m doing. Um, if I think back to how I was learning about conversation design, it really boils down to like it has to be something you’re interested in.

Like, it could be like the dumbest or simplest thing. You don’t need to judge it because if it’s something that interests you, you’re going to be more motivated to see it all the way through to the end. It could be something as simple as like, okay, I’m going to make an Alexa skill or a Google assistant. Let’s just say I’m going to order a pizza. I don’t know. It could be anything. It could be like, I love pizza. I want it to order pizza for me. Or let’s say like, I love running. I’m in the run club. I know a lot of runners. Like I want them to get an app for us to help us track our stat. It has to be something that interests you.

Learn at your own pace

Elaine: I will also say it’s like a general piece of advice. Like, um, I know there’s like a trend in tech or things like that, like a hundred days of code or like 30 days of UI design. Um, those challenges are meant to inspire you. They’re not meant to stress you out, like this shouldn’t be something that you should do at your own pace.

It could be like a hundred days in their role. It could just be like 15 and then you’re just like, I need a break. Um, so I would say that’s another piece of advice, especially in creative fields, like rumination is a legit part of the process. Like, don’t feel bad if you just need to take a break and think about things or not think about it.

About Voice This! Podcast

Conversations with the people who make conversational AI 🎙️Join Millani Jayasingkam and guests as they discuss voice technology, conversation design, AI trends, and the strategy of creating effective conversational experiences. Tune in for first-hand learnings, insights, anecdotes, and sometimes jokes! Say hi and send us your questions at: voicethispod@gmail.com.

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