Podcasts about designing voice user interfaces

In this episode (recorded in 2018) Sim dives into the realm of conversational AI with Cathy Pearl, the author of Designing Voice User Interfaces and the Head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google. They touch on the humor and satire inherent in creating conversational AI, the evolution of voice technology, and its impact on our daily lives. Guest bio Cathy Pearl is an expert in conversation design and voice user interface (VUI) design. She is the author of Designing Voice User Interfaces, and currently serves as the Head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google. She has been involved in the conversation design space for over a decade, with a focus on creating more human-centered and empathetic AI experiences. Key points Cathy discusses the evolution of voice technology and how it has made technology more accessible to a wider audience. She shares insights into the challenges and triumphs of creating conversational AI that can understand and respond to human needs. The conversation delves into the humorous aspects of conversational AI, including unintentionally hilarious responses and the inherent absurdity of talking to a machine. Cathy also discusses the future of conversational AI and the possibilities it holds, such as providing companionship and reducing loneliness.

Designing Voice User Interfaces: Principles of Conversational Experiences 1st Edition See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

My two guests today are widely sought after experts in voice user experience design. After more than 20 years designing voice user interfaces, Cathy Pearl is well known in the industry and is the author of what many people see as the key handbook for voice application design, "Designing Voice User Interfaces." Cathy currently serves as head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google. Prior to Google, Cathy was vice president of user experience at Sensely and before that worked at Nuance, Tellme, and Volio. She holds degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Science and worked for NASA early in her career.    Adva Levin is founder of Pretzel Labs, an award-winning voice interaction studio best known for winning the top prize in the Alexa skills competition for Kids skills in 2018. Other popular titles by Pretzel labs include Freeze Dancers and Kids Bop Daily. Pretzel Labs also works with brands, media companies and government ministries on voice user experience design. Adva is an Alexa Champion, has undergraduate degrees in Math and Economics, and a Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing from Columbia University.     Adva first joined me on Voicebot Podcast back in Episode 49 in June 2018 and Cathy preceded here by a few months in Episode 30 two years ago this month.

Conversational AI is our topic this week as your hosts Mark Mirchandani and Priyanka Vergadia are joined by Cathy Pearl and Jessica Dene Earley-Cha. Cathy explains what conversation AI is, describing it as people teaching computers to communicate the way humans do, rather than forcing humans to communicate like computers. Later, we talk best practices in design and development, including how a good conversation design and sample dialogues before building can create a better product. This prep work helps anticipate the ways different users could respond to the same question and how the program should react. In multi-modal programming, planning is also important. Our guests suggest starting with the spoken portions of the design and then planning visual components that would augment the experience. Working together as a team is one of the most important parts of the planning process. We also talk best use-cases for conversation AI. Does performing this task via voice make the experience better? Does it make the task easier or more accessible? If so, that could be a great application. In the future, the conversation may be a silent communication with the help of MIT’s Alter Ego. Cathy Pearl Cathy Pearl is head of conversation design outreach and author of the O’Reilly book, “Designing Voice User Interfaces”. She’s been creating Voice User Interfaces for 20 years and has worked on everything from programming NASA helicopter pilot simulators to a conversational app in which Esquire’s style columnist advises what to wear on a first date. She earned an MS in Computer Science from Indiana University and a BS in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego. You can find Cathy on Twitter, or check out her latest Medium article “A Conversation With My 35-year-old Chatbot”. Jessica Dene Earley-Cha Jessica Dene Earley-Cha is a Developer Advocate for Actions on Google. She loves to connect with developers and explore VUI (voice user interface) to add another dimension to how users interact with technology. Jessica is part of the leadership team for @WomenInVoice. You’ll find her either spending time with her dog, collecting strawberry knick knack or biking around town. Stay up-to-date on her ventures on Twitter. Cool things of the week How Google and Mayo Clinic will transform the future of healthcare blog Announcing the general availability of 6 and 12 TB VMs for SAP HANA instances on Google Cloud Platform blog Understanding your GCP Costs site and videos Coupon code for qwiklabs is: 1q-costs-626 Interview GCP Podcast Episode 188: Conversation AI with Priyanka Vergadia podcast Google’s Conversation Design Best Practices site Actions on Google site Interactive Canvas docs Dialogflow site Deconstructing Chatbots videos Behind the Actions videos Assistant On Air videos MIT’s Alter Ego site Google Developers on Medium site Actions Codelabs site Actions Code Samples site Actions on Google Twitter site Google Assistant Dev on Reddit site Cathy’s Book: Designing Voice User Interfaces site How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation site Talk: The Science of Conversation site Question of the week How to integrate Dialogflow with BigQuery Where can you find us next? Cathy will be at Project Voice. Mark will be on vacation soon! Priyanka will be at GOTO Berlin, Codemotion Milan, and GOTO Copenhagen

From restaurant recommendations to weather forecasts, our next guest believes each use case of Voice should seamlessly fit into our lives. Cathy Pearl is the Head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google and is on a mission to foster better conversations between machines and humans. She joins David-Michel Davies for a deep dive on Voice technology—from how computers should encompass the variety of human speech, her blueprint to help anyone who dreams of designing Voice User Interfaces, and much more.Keep up with Cathy @cpearl42 to learn how voice tech is developing through smart speakers and beyond. And if you're interested in designing voice, grab a copy of Cathy's book “Designing Voice User Interfaces.”Follow us everywhere @TheWebbyAwardsKeep up with David-Michel @dmdlikesOur Producer is Terence BrosnanOur Writer is Jordana JarrettOur Editorial Director is Nicole FerraroMusic is Podington Bear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Interviews Cathy Pearl, head of Conversation Design Outreach at Google and author of “Designing Voice User Interfaces” to discuss her views on AI, Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) and emergent opportunities in the field of online communications.Some of the topics Jeff and Cathy discuss include:How the use cases of voice interface have exceeded business applications and help us personally in the day to day (1:58)Cathy's book - a guide for people trying to develop voice interface applications (3:11) The challenges of designing voice interfaces that interact with humans (4:05)Cathy's "bigger picture" for voice and how it can truly help people (7:00) The future of work and career opportunities for people in the VUI field or who hope to enter it (9:00)How students in universities right now can prepare for a career in the VUI field with resources like Google Conversation Design Best Practices (11:40)How VUI can help improve empathy and enable people to have more fulfilling lives (14:30)Get to know more about Cathy and her work by visiting CathyPearl.com or on Twitter @cpearl42 and learn more about this podcast and Jeff Saperstein at InterconnectedIndividuals.com

Voicebot recently published the Voice UX Best Practices eBook. It is a 45-page masterclass in Voice UX that includes over 100 tips and recommendations from 17 industry experts gathered through dozens of hours of interviews. In this week's interview, I play audio clip highlights from some earlier podcasts and Emerson Sklar from Applause and I discuss the expert commentary and where it fits into the eBook. Featured experts include Ahmed Bouzid (Witlingo), Lisa Falkson (Amazon), Karen Kaushansky (Robot Future), Jan König (Jovo), Shane Mac (Assist), Tim McElreath (Discovery Communications), Cathy Pearl (Google & Author, Designing Voice User Interfaces),  Mark Webster (Sayspring / Adobe). You can download the full eBook at voicebot.ai/reports. 

In this episode, Teri welcomes Ilana Shalowitz, Voice User Interface (VUI) Design Manager at Emmi.Ilana Shalowitz is a well-respected authority in the voice-first design technology space, and she joins me today to talk about some of the key principles to consider when designing a voice-first experience for healthcare applications.Some tips from Ilana!Recommended reading: Designing Voice User Interfaces by Cathy Pearl, and Voice User Interface Design by James P. Giangola and Jennifer BaloghResearch before getting started!Listen to conversations with an ear for how people speak to each other, to determine what makes a good audio experience.Talk to people about your voice application, both about the idea itself (i.e. the strategic direction) and to test the conversation itself (i.e. Wizard of Oz testing)Remember designing a voice user interface experience is a lot like creating art or composing music; a “tapestry” of appropriate statements “woven” together.Consider how to build rapport with the user: consider your brand persona, set appropriate expectations, use the names of the users, be consistent in the way information is delivered, and develop trust.Links and Resources in this EpisodeIlana Shalowitz on LinkedInIlana Shalowitz at ilana.shalowitz@wolterskluwer.comEmmiDesigning Voice User Interfaces by Cathy PearlVoice User Interface Design by James P. Giangola and Jennifer BaloghLibrivoxDr. Teri Fisher on TwitterDr. Teri Fisher on LinkedInPlease leave a review on iTunes See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Teri welcomes Ilana Shalowitz, Voice User Interface (VUI) Design Manager at Emmi, to talk about the tips and tricks that go into creating a quality voice skill or application.Welcome Ilana Shalowitz from Emmi!Ilana Shalowitz is the Voice User Interface (VUI) Design Manager at Emmi. She is a well-respected authority and influencer in the voice-first design technology space, having appeared on a number of podcasts, and having spoken at a number of voice-first events. She will be a keynote speaker at the Voice of Healthcare Summit at Harvard Medical School in August 2018. She joins me today to talk about some of the key principles to consider when designing a voice-first experience.Ilana has a strong interest in communication for behaviour change. She initially studied anthropology and psychology, and then got a Masters in Marketing Communications. After working in marketing, she found a passion for design and now loves her work as a voice user interface designer!How to Design a Voice-first User ExperienceRecommended reading: Designing Voice User Interfaces by Cathy Pearl, and Voice User Interface Design by James P. Giangola and Jennifer BaloghResearch before getting started! “Understand the lay of the land”Start playing around with Alexa skills in tools such as StorylineListen to conversations with an ear for how people speak to each other, to determine what makes a good audio experience.Listen to recorded books on Librivox – a site where anyone can record books that are released into the public domain – to critically analyze the voice experiences to think about what would make them better experiencesTalk to people about your voice application, both about the idea itself (i.e. the strategic direction) and to test the conversation itself (i.e. Wizard of Oz testing)Remember designing a voice user interface experience is a lot like creating art or composing music; a “tapestry” of appropriate statements “woven” together.Consider how to build rapport with the user: consider your brand persona, set appropriate expectations, use the names of the users, be consistent in the way information is delivered, and develop trust.Important Concepts to consider in Voice User Interface DesignEntities – important nuggets of information that someone is trying to portray (i.e. ‘Boston’ is the important entity in the statement, “I would like to book a trip to Boston.”)Cognitive Load – how effortful is it for the user to understand the particular question and to answer it.Listenability – how easy is it for someone to comprehend the voice experience.Common Mistakes in Voice User Interface DesignNot doing user research before creating the skill.Overpromising and underdelivering.How to get Started in Voice User Interface Design as a CareerJoin the voice user interface design community: read the latest news article, and connect with people in the community/industryEmphasize your diversity and interdisciplinary background; these are great for VUI design!Develop a skill of your ownHealthcare and VoiceVoice is at the intersection of population health and personalized medicine.This is a very exciting frontier for health care over the next few years.Thank you Ilana!Thank you very much for sharing your expertise and knowledge with us. I learned so much and I look forward to putting these tips into practise!List of resources mentioned in this episode:Ilana Shalowitz on LinkedInIlana Shalowitz at ilana.shalowitz@wolterskluwer.comEmmiDesigning Voice User Interfaces by Cathy PearlVoice User Interface Design by James P. Giangola and Jennifer BaloghLibrivoxVoice of Healthcare SummitStorylinePlease leave a review on iTunesShopping on Amazon.ca See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Cathy Pearl is one of the few experts in the rising field of designing computers with a voice, working in the San Francisco Bay Area for over two decades and experimenting to create a more natural, conversational way to interact with the devices that help us connect every day. Her book "Designing Voice User Interfaces", published by O'Reilly, is recognized as one of the main texts on the subject by her colleagues who design smart chatbots and general assistants used daily by millions of people.  

Cathy Pearl is best known as the author of Designing Voice User Interfaces published by O'Reilly Media. She is currently Vice President of User Experience at Sensely, worked previously at Nuance, was on the Ford Sync team and holds degrees in both Computer Science and Cognitive Science. Cathy even worked at NASA early in her career where she designed user controls that reduced cognitive load for pilots. She has a lot of hands-on voice design experience, is viewed as an authority in the field and has some insights on using avatars and multiple input methods to complement voice interfaces.

The O'Reilly Design Podcast: The VUI tools ecosystems, and voice gender and accent selections.In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely and author of Designing Voice User Interfaces. We talk about defining conversations, the growing tools ecosystems, and how voice has lessened our screen obsession.Here are a few highlights from our conversation: What constitutes a conversation? To me, I do have a definition of ‘conversational.’ I was talking about this at O’Reilly Bot Day last week. For example: my Amazon Echo. I don’t view the Amazon Echo generally as conversational because most of the things I do are one-offs. I’ll say, ‘What time is it?’ or ‘Turn on the lights’ or ‘Set a timer,’ and she’ll give me one response, and we’re done. If I go up to you and say, ‘How are you doing today?’ and you say, ‘Fine,’ and then we turn and walk away, I don’t really see that as having a conversation. That would not be a very good conversation. One of my definitions for ‘conversational’ is that it has to have more than one turn. A lot of times, with a lot of these voice assistants—let’s say, you can do multiple turns but they don’t remember what you said before. Each turn is like a brand-new conversation, which would be really annoying if you were talking to somebody and every time you said something, they didn’t remember anything you told them before. In relation to that, they really need to understand pronouns. This is something that humans or toddlers can understand. I can tell a toddler to, ‘Go get the red ball out of the green box,’ and it knows it. The kid knows that I want the red ball. Computers have a really hard time with that. It’s starting to improve. Google, especially, I think, is working hard on this task. I've heard that with Google Home, they’re going to be better about that kind of thing, but those are some of the things I think systems need to be conversational, and that could be either through voice or through text. Designing for how people talk not how you want them to talk My biggest principle and advice is to design for how people actually talk and not how you want them to talk. I think as designers and developers, we get very focused on whatever we’re building, and we think it’s very obvious: ‘Yes, the user will know what they can say here.’ It’s really not true. Especially if you're designing something like a virtual assistant, like Siri. She says, ‘How can I help you?’ That really sets up the user for failure in a lot of cases because you really can’t just say anything. There’s a limited number of things you can say. We need to spend a lot of time thinking about how will we communicate with the user, what they can actually say. There’s different ways to do that. One thing that’s really important is when you're first designing your system, spend a lot of time writing what we call sample dialogues, which are essentially back-and-forth conversations, like a film script between the voice user interface and the user. You write these down. Then, you read them out loud with somebody. You learn very quickly—if I wrote the system and I am reading my voice user interface prompts, and then I have someone else responding, I learn very quickly, ‘Really, someone would say that? I didn’t expect that.’ You can really build your system well from the beginning by doing some simple design exercises like that. Another thing that’s really important to understand about voice is that speech recognition is not perfect. Yes, it’s way, way, way, way better than it used to be, but it still makes a lot of mistakes. You have to build a graceful error recovery into every voice system no matter what. I don’t think, personally, that it will ever be a 100%. Accurate human speech recognition is certainly not 100% accurate. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about your error recovery. The tools ecosystem I’m actually very excited right now because I think we’re starting to see a lot of tools actually come out, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot of them. For example, there’s a company called PullString. They used to be called ToyTalk. They made the Hello Barbie and some kids’ apps like the Winston Show. They just put out an authoring tool. I downloaded it. I'm really looking forward to trying that for creating new sample dialogues, new stories. Then, there are things like TinCan.ai out of Conversant Labs, which I think will be really great for doing prototyping, which is something we’re solely lacking in the real world, the ability to do quick prototyping. Then, you’ve got a mixture other tools from places like API.AI, which was bought by Google; Nuance’s Mix; Wit.ai, which is Facebook. These allow you to build models by giving a lot of sample sentences and having that learned. For example, if you’re trying to build a calendar VUI, you might put a bunch of sample sentences in about how I want to schedule an appointment. It can learn from those examples so that when somebody says something new that you didn’t already write down, it can still understand. I’m just very excited that these tools are finally coming out. It’s always been the Holy Grail of the voice user interface, where we were always trying to build tools at Nuance. It’s very difficult to do. Hopefully, we’re really getting to the point where they’re workable.

The O'Reilly Design Podcast: The VUI tools ecosystems, and voice gender and accent selections.In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely and author of Designing Voice User Interfaces. We talk about defining conversations, the growing tools ecosystems, and how voice has lessened our screen obsession.Here are a few highlights from our conversation: What constitutes a conversation? To me, I do have a definition of ‘conversational.’ I was talking about this at O’Reilly Bot Day last week. For example: my Amazon Echo. I don’t view the Amazon Echo generally as conversational because most of the things I do are one-offs. I’ll say, ‘What time is it?’ or ‘Turn on the lights’ or ‘Set a timer,’ and she’ll give me one response, and we’re done. If I go up to you and say, ‘How are you doing today?’ and you say, ‘Fine,’ and then we turn and walk away, I don’t really see that as having a conversation. That would not be a very good conversation. One of my definitions for ‘conversational’ is that it has to have more than one turn. A lot of times, with a lot of these voice assistants—let’s say, you can do multiple turns but they don’t remember what you said before. Each turn is like a brand-new conversation, which would be really annoying if you were talking to somebody and every time you said something, they didn’t remember anything you told them before. In relation to that, they really need to understand pronouns. This is something that humans or toddlers can understand. I can tell a toddler to, ‘Go get the red ball out of the green box,’ and it knows it. The kid knows that I want the red ball. Computers have a really hard time with that. It’s starting to improve. Google, especially, I think, is working hard on this task. I've heard that with Google Home, they’re going to be better about that kind of thing, but those are some of the things I think systems need to be conversational, and that could be either through voice or through text. Designing for how people talk not how you want them to talk My biggest principle and advice is to design for how people actually talk and not how you want them to talk. I think as designers and developers, we get very focused on whatever we’re building, and we think it’s very obvious: ‘Yes, the user will know what they can say here.’ It’s really not true. Especially if you're designing something like a virtual assistant, like Siri. She says, ‘How can I help you?’ That really sets up the user for failure in a lot of cases because you really can’t just say anything. There’s a limited number of things you can say. We need to spend a lot of time thinking about how will we communicate with the user, what they can actually say. There’s different ways to do that. One thing that’s really important is when you're first designing your system, spend a lot of time writing what we call sample dialogues, which are essentially back-and-forth conversations, like a film script between the voice user interface and the user. You write these down. Then, you read them out loud with somebody. You learn very quickly—if I wrote the system and I am reading my voice user interface prompts, and then I have someone else responding, I learn very quickly, ‘Really, someone would say that? I didn’t expect that.’ You can really build your system well from the beginning by doing some simple design exercises like that. Another thing that’s really important to understand about voice is that speech recognition is not perfect. Yes, it’s way, way, way, way better than it used to be, but it still makes a lot of mistakes. You have to build a graceful error recovery into every voice system no matter what. I don’t think, personally, that it will ever be a 100%. Accurate human speech recognition is certainly not 100% accurate. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about your error recovery. The tools ecosystem I’m actually very excited right now because I think we’re starting to see a lot of tools actually come out, and I’m looking forward to learning a lot of them. For example, there’s a company called PullString. They used to be called ToyTalk. They made the Hello Barbie and some kids’ apps like the Winston Show. They just put out an authoring tool. I downloaded it. I'm really looking forward to trying that for creating new sample dialogues, new stories. Then, there are things like TinCan.ai out of Conversant Labs, which I think will be really great for doing prototyping, which is something we’re solely lacking in the real world, the ability to do quick prototyping. Then, you’ve got a mixture other tools from places like API.AI, which was bought by Google; Nuance’s Mix; Wit.ai, which is Facebook. These allow you to build models by giving a lot of sample sentences and having that learned. For example, if you’re trying to build a calendar VUI, you might put a bunch of sample sentences in about how I want to schedule an appointment. It can learn from those examples so that when somebody says something new that you didn’t already write down, it can still understand. I’m just very excited that these tools are finally coming out. It’s always been the Holy Grail of the voice user interface, where we were always trying to build tools at Nuance. It’s very difficult to do. Hopefully, we’re really getting to the point where they’re workable.

The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: Applying the principles of normal human interaction to chatbots.In episode four of the O’Reilly Bots podcast, Pete Skomoroch and I speak with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely, and author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book “Designing Voice User Interfaces.” She’s also a speaker at O’Reilly’s upcoming Bot Day on October 19, 2016, in San Francisco.We begin with some differences between VUIs and conventional UIs. Pearl points out that “the key to conversational design is anticipating how people actually speak, not how we want them to speak.” The Amazon Echo, which we demonstrated in detail in episode 3, keeps coming up as a totally new mode of user interface; not only is it an exclusively voice-based interface with no built-in screen, but it’s also fundamentally social, intended for use in common spaces. Like Siri, the Echo has careful persona design, with subtle signals that help users figure out how to interact with it (as well as keeping them entertained). Links: Sensely’s “virtual nurse” avatar Molly Domino’s Pizza voice interface The infamous Tay Twitterbot Microsoft’s Your Face Dan Grover on bots Bot of the week Pete and I stage a dramatic reading from Sensay, a chatbot that connects users with expert advice.

The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: Applying the principles of normal human interaction to chatbots.In episode four of the O’Reilly Bots podcast, Pete Skomoroch and I speak with Cathy Pearl, director of user experience at Sensely, and author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book “Designing Voice User Interfaces.” She’s also a speaker at O’Reilly’s upcoming Bot Day on October 19, 2016, in San Francisco.We begin with some differences between VUIs and conventional UIs. Pearl points out that “the key to conversational design is anticipating how people actually speak, not how we want them to speak.” The Amazon Echo, which we demonstrated in detail in episode 3, keeps coming up as a totally new mode of user interface; not only is it an exclusively voice-based interface with no built-in screen, but it’s also fundamentally social, intended for use in common spaces. Like Siri, the Echo has careful persona design, with subtle signals that help users figure out how to interact with it (as well as keeping them entertained). Links: Sensely’s “virtual nurse” avatar Molly Domino’s Pizza voice interface The infamous Tay Twitterbot Microsoft’s Your Face Dan Grover on bots Bot of the week Pete and I stage a dramatic reading from Sensay, a chatbot that connects users with expert advice.