Conversational UX — A new generation of interfaces
What are the arising challenges and opportunities for designers in the field of conversational interfaces?
From HAL to Jarvis, conversational interfaces have been a promise of science fiction for many decades; now they can become a reality. Voice interfaces offer us speed and efficiency, but we need to design them considering the challenges this interaction provides so it doesn’t turn the interaction into a nightmare for the user.
When we think about voice interfaces, we remember those that were created in the movies when we were growing up. Since that time, we were dreaming about computers that would show a higher level of understanding, and that would efficiently solve our problems.
However, most of the time we are not aware that this technology is already being used in our daily routines, just not as we idealized it. We have the technology but we don’t have standards for natural interactions. This evolves into the user not eager to interact with the interface since it won’t behave as expected. That’s why UX designers have an opportunity to create and define the standards and expectations for this experience.
What is a conversational interface?
In every type of computer interaction, we need to have a component that lets us interact with the system at hand. This is called an interface. We have for example the Command Line Interface (CLI) and Graphical User Interface (GUI).
The Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) are those that try to imitate a human conversation through natural language processing technologies.
As technology is evolving we can find it in more and more places, like bots in Facebook, business sites, or voice assistants. Like other types of interfaces, this one can be supported by the other non-conversational resources, like buttons, images, but the main interaction between the user and the system is with written or spoken conversations.
Why should we go conversational first
Let’s suppose for a moment that we want to send a text message to a friend asking about the weather. While we could write the message and select our friend after searching from our list of contacts, with a correctly implemented voice assistant it could take only a couple of seconds.
Voice interfaces let users accomplish a task with a simple instruction, without needing to be distracted from the current task, letting them be more efficient in their daily work.
Better for the user
All our life we have been communicating through conversations, we are experts in this type of interaction. This lets us use conversational interfaces with ease and speed without a learning curve. As a plus, it is easier to buy a voice assistant than a computer or a mobile device, since the only thing you need is a speaker with a microphone. In terms of accessibility, people with visual or mobility impairment would get huge benefits if the conversational interfaces were universally adopted.
Better for the developer
As technology has been evolving, creating a conversational flow is easier and faster than before. Anyone can create an application for Google Assistant, Alexa, or a Facebook bot for a business, through a free website without even knowing programming languages. With interfaces that let you write and connect your dialogues, it is even easier than building Legos. Major companies like Google, IBM, and Amazon have put in the hands of the public the documentation, technology, and resources to create more and more complex implementations.
“Conversational Interfaces are at the stage that web interfaces were in 1996: the technologies are in the hands of the masses, but mature design standards have not yet emerged around them” (Moore, 2019)
The real challenge in creating a conversation
We have been practicing how to have a conversation since we started our life, but in fact, we do not know exactly how they work. We ignore thousands of processes and mechanics, logics, and variables that happen in a single human conversation; we just focus on the message being communicated. To create good conversations, it’s necessary to understand how they work. Graphical interfaces and the methods in which the user interacts through buttons and images have been developed over the years by the study of the graphic arts, but conversations are whole new interfaces, with their challenges and opportunities.
“The crucial test of understanding, as every teacher should know, is not the subject’s ability to continue a conversation, but to draw valid conclusions from what he is being told. (Weizenbaum, 1966)
Your opportunity as a UX designer
For years we have been using the graphics arts as support; now UX designers, developers, and content creators should look for help in social sciences. Social sciences have been studying human conversation for decades, and those foundations can help us create the basis of Conversational UX Design.
Conversation UX Design
To create these new interfaces, we need to merge multiple design and social disciplines, including:
- Voice User Interface Design
- Visual & Motion Design
- Interaction Design
- Audio Design
- UX Writing
- Conversation Analysis
Among other multiple skills the conversational UX designers need to:
- Understand the human conversation: Must understand how human conversation works, how it is organized and what it is made of, to relate to systems as we would with a friend or colleague.
- Lean on social sciences: The designers need to understand the mechanisms and methods, understand the different dialog structures: Answering has a different structure from quizzing, debating, or storytelling.
- Create conversations: Instead of colors these designers have speech structures and instead of mockups they have conversations flows. These designers will create interactions through the use of conversational structures, speech schemes, and logic flows. They create interactions without the help of buttons or visual guides. The ultimate goal is not to create a bot or a voice control system, but a conversational experience.
We are living a situation today with the conversational interfaces in which, largely, we already have the technology to create great products, but there are no mature and popularized guides, standards, or frameworks. We continue to perceive it as a futuristic technology. This presents a historical opportunity for developers, UX, and product designers.
All conversations are interactions, but not all interactions are conversations. (Moore, 2018)
It is time to start finding opportunities for implementation, study, and analysis of a whole new field. It is a chance to explore, create, and be part of the generation of the foundations of what conversational theory will be. Let’s start the conversation.
Want to learn more?
Every day there are more resources to developers and designers to involve and create for this emerging technology:
- Amazon Guidelines for Alexa Actions
- IBM Watson Documentation
- Microsoft Cognitive Services Documentation
- Google Assistant Actions Documentation
- Moore, R., and Arar, R., 2019. Conversational UX Design. ACM Books.
- Shevat, A., 2017. Designing Bots. 1st ed. O’Reilly Media.
- Conversational UX Webinar by myself on Yellowme YouTube Channel [Spanish]
