Conversation Design - Understand The Conversation Design Process

The Conversation Design Process

Conversation design involves strategic and systematic planning of dialogues. It requires collaboration and effort, not just writing dialog. The process is similar to product design, divided into four stages:

1. Discover: Gather requirements from stakeholders and conduct relevant research.
2. Ideate: Create a document outlining the conversation's objectives and desired user experience.
3. Prototype: Develop the information architecture (IA) with flowcharts, menus, and the voice/tone of the bot. Write the actual dialog and assemble it in a prototyping tool.
4. Revise: Conduct usability testing, review with stakeholders for final approvals, and conduct quality assurance (QA) in the final build.

Stakeholders in Conversation Design

Conversation design is a team effort, involving various stakeholders:

1. Documentation, Content Strategy, Content Experience: Interface between marketing and copy creators.
2. Subject Matter Expert (SME): Provides domain-specific knowledge to ensure the bot's voice and terminology are authentic.
3. Marketing: Ensures the bot's style aligns with the corporate brand and voice.
4. User Experience (UX)/Design: Integrates the bot within the broader user experience.
5. Legal: Ensures compliance with laws and mitigates legal risks.
6. Engineering: Customizes the bot, especially for voice, with technical expertise.
7. Project/Product Owner: Coordinates efforts across teams.
8. Systems/Tools Admins (Ops): Manages systems permissions and technical tasks.
9. Business Analyst/Data Scientist: Analyzes data points to identify issues and improvements.

Day-to-Day Tasks

Tasks vary based on project size and team, but generally include:

1. Context Setting, Stakeholder Alignment, and Gathering Requirements: Medium to large task.
2. Research: Small to medium task.
3. Creating User Experience Vision: Medium to large task.
4. Information Architecture and Copywriting: Large to extra-large tasks.
5. Revisions, Testing, and QA: Extra-large task.

Outputs of Conversation Design

A conversation designer works on:

1. Vision for Conversational Experience: Defines how customers interact with the brand through conversations.
2. Strategy and Tactics: Outlines the bot's functionalities and main use cases.
3. Information Architecture Flowchart: Shows the structure of dialogs and decision-making processes.
4. Sample Dialogs and Prototypes: Demonstrates the bot's conversational flow.
5. Annotated Transcript: Provides insights into design decisions and potential issues.

What You Make

Vision of Conversational Experience

Conversation designers craft a vision for how customers interact with the brand via voice or text. This often involves creating a slide deck or similar presentation to highlight key aspects such as voice and tone, inclusivity, relationship building, and user needs.

Bot Strategy and Functionality

Designers outline the bot's expected behaviors and main use cases. This includes:

• Information Architecture Flowchart: Shows how dialogs fit together.
• Turn-Taking Structure: Defines how the bot and user interact.
• Sample Dialogs: Written examples of conversations in the bot's voice.
• Prototyping: Using tools like Botsociety, Botmock, Voiceflow, or Rasa to create a video demo or text-to-speech simulation.
• Annotated Transcript: Explains design decisions and highlights potential issues, delivered in a commonly used format (e.g., presentation deck or spreadsheet).

Information Architecture

A detailed flow chart of the bot’s decision-making process, showing which dialogs are triggered by user actions and responses.

Conclusion

By creating a comprehensive vision, detailed strategy, and thorough documentation, conversation designers ensure effective and engaging user interactions. The next unit will explore strategies for achieving high-quality conversations.