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Summary
There has never been a better time to design conversational UIs! In this informal session followed by extensive Q&A, Greg Nudelman, the author of 5 UX design books, veteran presenter, and designer of conversational UIs on 5 different projects in a variety of industries discussed key aspects of the conversational bot experience and conversational UI best practices. Participants learned: how to pick the right bot framework, how to use basic building blocks of bot dialog (Intents, Entities, Dialogs) to create conversational UIs, and the key importance of context and channels (Mobile, Wearables, etc.) for shaping the conversational experience. We spent the bulk of time on what is "right around the bend" in the near-future of conversational UIs. From practical tips you can put to work immediately, to inspiration for your next project, participants came away saying "Bot Future so Bright, Gotta Wear Ear-Muffs!"
Key Insights
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UX professionals must act as advocates who balance innovative AI capabilities with ethical, user-centered design.
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Conversational bots are a critical on-ramp for integrating UX with AI development.
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Microsoft Bot Framework with Lewis and Cortana offers a powerful and standalone platform ideal for many bot applications.
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Starting bot design assuming failure leads to more robust and user-friendly conversations.
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A well-chosen bot name should set realistic user expectations—avoiding anthropomorphism prevents misplaced trust.
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Handling ambiguous input gracefully, such as accents or foreign names, is crucial for better user experience.
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Maintaining conversational context across multi-turn interactions dramatically improves bot usefulness, but is challenging technically.
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Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) is key to improving voice bot expressiveness, including tone and pacing.
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Bots paired with human operators (AI Turk) provide a practical way to handle queries AI can’t resolve yet, while training AI continuously.
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Hands-free voice interactions can significantly improve usability in critical or distracting environments like driving.
Notable Quotes
"Bots are not alive, so don’t name them Bob because that sets unrealistic expectations."
"You should design from zero assuming your bot is going to fail and doesn’t understand everything."
"Don’t pretend your bot has feelings unless you truly build that capability."
"It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to build a simple bot to explore what the technology can do."
"Handling pauses and timing in voice interfaces requires careful use of SSML to control cadence and breaks."
"The biggest challenge is keeping context between user interactions; humans do it naturally, bots don’t yet."
"A perfect use case can still fail if users don’t trust or see time savings from the bot."
"You can use bots to augment existing forms, for example, pre-filling a form after voice input for confirmation."
"Privacy best practices include not listening continuously until a wake word is detected and limiting data sent to servers."
"Imagine answering a call just by saying hello without touching any buttons—that’s the future UX we can build."
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