UX Australia 2019

Full day workshop, Tuesday 27 August (all day) - buy tickets here

In just five years, the mass adoption of “intelligent” voice assistants—such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant—has changed personal technology usage around the world. Similar to the inflection point of mobile computing in 2010 - 2012, the roles and nature of assistants are evolving rapidly as entirely new categories of devices and experiences emerge. Globally, smart speakers and other voice-enabled devices now number in the billions and instances of use in the tens of billions.

The staggering growth of “voice first” experiences is driving business leaders and design practitioners to consider the strengths and differences between voice-first experiences and graphical interfaces. The assistant channel is used differently than the web and mobile. Conversational interfaces are subject to hard-wired psychological, linguistic, and environmental limitations that make even state-of-the-art voice technologies a challenge to implement successfully.

It’s become crucial for digital teams across industries and among companies of every size and description to plan for the demand for design practitioners. Learning to work with the leading edge of new technologies challenges organizations and individuals. Like any other design discipline, good voice-first experiences don’t happen by accident. What’s more, mapping out and scripting verbal interactions and creating intuitive intents and system responses require a different approach to solving customer problems. Delivering conversational interfaces effectively also comes from different tools, skills, and product approaches.

This day-long workshop will arm practitioners and leaders with the practical experience and crucial insights necessary to solve hard problems and delight customers with voice-first approaches.

Topics will include:

• The differences in voice-powered software, with a focus on AI-powered systems
• The current limits of these systems and how that shapes design
• What conversation and multimodality mean within digital products, and how small changes in affordances, change a design
• The impact of human psycholinguistic limitations on digital design and language processing
• How customer behavioral insights and cultural norms shape design decisions
• Strategy pitfalls, and the right kinds of problems to solve with voice-first
• Alexa Domains, Skills, and Blueprints
• Guidelines for writing effective intents, interaction pitfalls, and the complexity of language
• A practical, fun and creative team exercise to envision and prototype a fictional Alexa skill (with a fun twist). We’ll use the Amazon “Working Backwards” process, and body storming, with the goal of rapidly prototyping a voice interaction through storyboarding using inexpensive software and a smartphone. NO DRAWING IS REQUIRED.
• A group review of each team’s storyboards.