Cathy Pearl on voice user interfaces for bots - a podcast by OReilly Media

The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: Applying the principles of normal human interaction to chatbots.

In episode four of theO’Reilly Bots podcast,Pete Skomorochand I speak withCathy Pearl, director of user experience atSensely, and author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book “Designing Voice User Interfaces.” She’s also a speaker atO’Reilly’s upcoming Bot Dayon 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 wedemonstrated 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” avatarMolly
• Domino’s Pizza voice interface
• The infamousTay Twitterbot
• Microsoft’sYour Face
• Dan Grover on bots

Bot of the week

Pete and I stage a dramatic reading fromSensay, a chatbot that connects users with expert advice.

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