On Conversational Design

One thing that has me really excited about new products is the growing trend of Conversational Design.

I recently wrote about the breaking down of siloed experiences created by apps so that contextually related tasks can be combined into a single experience (e.g. ordering an Uber from Facebook Messenger). This is partly a result of the user interface transforming into a dialog between user and application. Text being the great equalizer, if a conversation can happen, all things are understood and possible.

This trend will likely be hastened by the advent of two other technologies that are quickly gaining traction: Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.

AI as it relates to conversational design is obvious. AI involves a self-aware machine that can learn from interaction. Conversational Design doesn’t require AI – when I “chat” with Slackbot to complete my user profile, it’s not learning; rather the interface is cleverly constructed to appear to be a conversation. No doubt though, as AI is improved and integrated in everyday products, the net effect will be an increasing use of conversational design in all things.

Virtual Reality, I believe, will also help spur on conversational design. Traditional user interfaces will seem to be clunky virtual reality. They would also threaten to break the illusion VR is creating (I’m in this amazing, majestic landscape; let me pull out a keyboard to navigate elsewhere). Dialog seems to be a more fitting UI in VR. Hence, conversational design.

And this brings me back to the app experience today and why it needs to be replaced. I suspect that a user will not want to have conversations with numerous different applications, each with different responses and cues to natural language conversation. Users don’t want to “train” 20 different bots to understand them. They want a single voice. They want a personal concierge. 

Apple has Siri and Amazon recently launched Alexa. Each will get better with iteration (I mean, Siri can’t get worse, can it?). But I think there’s a risk in these platforms being built by existing businesses. What if I don’t want to own an Apple product? What if I want to shop somewhere other than Amazon? I believe there’s an opportunity for a new company to build a conversational product that is agnostic to brand and business. Something that handles one's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds, while allowing users to request services, such as an Urber or food ordering, and allows shopping across all online retail. This digital concierge will work everywhere.

That seems like something people would be interested in.

A Blog About Product

In 2013 I was working with my team building a digital product. This was a little unusual because I didn't work at a product company.

A little background: I've spent the past decade working in UX, specifically for digital agencies helping big-brand companies design marketing and ecommerce websites. Agencies are really good at building something to specifications provided by a client. But we'll never be mistaken for a product company (even though more and more agencies are trying to pull this off).

The product we were trying to build was a geo-location based social media app whereby users were able to "place" digital content in the real world to be discovered by other users walking by. We failed miserably. But this post isn't about that experience.

I bring it up only because it was at this time - while I was trying to figure out what we were doing wrong, or trying to figure out how to do it right - that I came across this Medium post: The Secret to Designing the Right Product by Matt Schlicht.

This post was eye-opening to me, introducing me to a new way of thinking about design and web development. It was a very non-agency approach. From this post I began reading everything I could find on the subject of product design and lean methodologies. The subject invigorated me and thankfully there's a lot of content out there on it.

This is why I'm starting this blog. I'm interested in building products (and companies) - how to do it well, and new ways of working. I intend to use this blog to talk about what's happening in the space, as well as comment on what I find interesting about those developments.

If you're interested in this theme as well, check back. I haven't settled on a cadence, but I'm hoping to post at least a couple times a week. And reach out to me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

More to come.