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Oren Jacob is CEO and founder of PullString and Greg Hedges is Vice President of Emerging Experiences at RAIN Agency. In this episode, we break down the latest adoption data of voice assistants on and beyond the smart speaker. User adoption of voice assistants is actually higher on smartphones and in cars, we explore how that impacts brands, media, and enterprises while also exploring how consumers use them today. You can download the report at https://voicebot.ai/research and follow along with the discussion or just sit back and listen to two industry experts share how organizations are reacting to the spread of voice on multiple device surfaces.
A deep dive into the three pillars of conversation design: psychology, technology and creative writing, with Robocopy's Hans Van Dam.Where to listenApple podcastsSpotifyYouTubeCastBoxSpreakerTuneInBreakerStitcherPlayerFMiHeartRadioConversation designConversation design is more than simply putting some words on a page and hoping for the best. The assembly of words is only part of the job of a conversation designer.To design natural conversations that mimic what we're accustomed to having with our fellow homo sapiens, it takes an understanding of the three pillars: psychology, technology and writing.In this episodeThis week, we're joined by Hans Van Dam, founder of conversation design agency, Robocopy, and creator of top conversation design training program, conversationalacademy.com, to be taken through the details of what it takes to design great conversational experiences.Hans takes us through:Why understanding the technology is important. Human and computer brains are different. Appreciating what's different and the constraints you're operating in will help you work within your limits and get the most of of your conversation.Why psychology is key. We discuss things like anchoring, framing, social proof and plenty more psychological tools that can help you improve the user experience and success of your conversations.Why copywriting is all you have and how to make the most of it. We've covered how writing for the screen is different to writing for the ear in our conversation with Oren Jacob of Pullstring. We take that concept further in this episode and discuss some of the mistakes brands make when designing conversation, as well as who should be designing them.We also get into detail on things like the importance persona design, measuring success and a whole host more.LinksVisit the Robocopy websiteCheck out the Conversational AcademyFollow Hans on TwitterNudge by Case Sustein and Richard Thaler on AmazonKurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing Fiction See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This week, we speak to conversation design master, Oren Jacob, about what it takes to create successful conversations with technology.There are so many complexities in human conversation. When creating an Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action, most designers try to mimic human conversation. Google itself has taken steps in this direction with the fabricated ‘mm hmm’ moments with Google Duplex.But does all of this have an actual impact on the user experience? Does it make it better or worse? How natural is natural enough and does it matter?What other factors contribute to conversation design that works?PullString CEO and co-founder, Oren Jacob answers all in this week's episode.In this episode on conversation designWe get deep into conversation design this week and discuss things like:How natural should conversations with voice assistants be?Why you shouldn't just try to mimic human conversationThe power of voice and what tools designers need to create compelling personasWhether you should you use the built in text-to-speech (TTS) synthetic voice or record your own dialogueHow any why writing dialogue is entirely different from writing to be readThe similarities and differences between making a film and creating a conversational experience on a voice first deviceThe limitations and opportunities for improved audio capability and sound designThe importance of having an equal balance of creative and technical talent in teamsWhat it all means for brands and why you should start figuring that out nowOur guestOren Jacob, co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Oren has worked in the space in between creativity and technology for two decades.After spending 20 years working at Pixar on some of the company's classic films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, Oren created ToyTalk.ToyTalk was a company that allowed kids to interact with their toys through voice.As voice technology progressed and voice assistants and smart speakers were shaping up to take the world by storm, ToyTalk morphed into PullString, the enterprise-grade conversation design platform.About PullstringFor over half a decade, PullString's platform, software, and tools have been used to build some of the biggest and best computer conversation in market, with use cases and verticals as diverse as hospitality to home improvement and Hello Barbie to Destiny 2. It was also used to create, the latest in big-ticket skills, HBO 's Westworld: The Maze.Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaYouTubeAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksVisit the PullString webisteFollow PullString on TwitterRead more about how the Westworld skill was createdCheck out the details of the talk Oren will be giving at the VOICE Summit 18Check out the details of Daniel Sinto's demo of PullString Conversehappening at the VOICE Summit 18Check out the VOICE Summit website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Oren Jacob saw Star Wars as a kid, and fell in love with the idea of bringing together technology and storytelling to create something entirely new. Today, he’s the cofounder and CEO of PullString, a tech startup that teaches software how to have conversation. That could mean helping companies build an Alexa skill for Amazon’s Echo, or allowing Hello Barbie to talk. I caught up with Oren at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, where he spoke to leaders in the tech world about laying the groundwork for the future of voice interaction with computers. He told me how his early fascination with Star Wars led him to an internship and first career at Pixar – before he decided to start his own thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oren Jacob is co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Founded in 2011, Pullstring is maker of Converse, an enterprise SaaS platform for building, deploying and maintaining conversational apps. Oren discusses how his 20-year career making movies at Pixar influences his approach to voice app and multimodal design. He goes into how the company started, how things were different before Amazon Echo, how the kids in his neighborhood were his original focus group and what he learned from working on high profile projects for Mattel, Grand Tour and Sponge Bob.
Regular listeners will remember that I recently interviewed Adobe’s Colin Morris about how voice-based interfaces have suddenly become a significant tool for marketers. But, it’s not just voice: marketers are gravitating both to voice and text-based computer conversation (e.g. chatbots) to engage with customers. PullString is the only company enabling conversations on Amazon Echo, Alexa Google Home, as well as text-based computer conversations on Microsoft’s Skype and Facebook’s Messenger. As these platforms surge in popularity with consumers, PullString is seeing a similar surge in demand from companies that want to build branded chatbot experiences on these platforms. Today's guest is Oren Jacob, and he is the CEO and co founder of Pullstring but also has a very rich history, Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull had personally chosen Oren to lead Pixar’s internal tech team as CTO, where he worked on Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo.
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Oren Jacob, former CTO of film studio Pixar and founder of computer conversation startup Pullstring to talk about the new age of voice technology and talking Barbie (2:30), how the Amazon Echo ended the family shopping trip (7:30), his years at Pixar (12:00), building Mrs Potatohead (13:30), how a stuffed bunny inspired his startup (14:45), cold-calling speech experts (18:30), doing market research in a tent (20:30), raising the first round of venture capital (23:30), the difficulty of doing speech recognition for children (25:30), the many tech revolutions making voice systems possible (28:45), turning algorthms into characters (36:00), whether bots kill jobs (40:00), expecting too much from machines (46:00), and the importance of a voice assistant elegantly saying “I don’t know” (47:45). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Oren Jacob, former CTO of Pixar and now CEO of Toy Talk talks about changing the landscape with hi tech toys, like the much anticipated chat back Hello Barbie. Katie chats with Sam Roberts about …fall and fire.