This document discusses conversational design for user experiences. It covers conversational thinking, elements of good conversation, practices to try, and a case study of a chatbot. The key points are: 1) Conversational design accounts for how interactions unfold over time through give-and-take. 2) Good conversations have cadence, rhythm and turn-taking like in play. 3) Practices to try conversational design include talking through each element and recording findings. 4) A case study chatbot got more leads to talk to sales, driving growth and retention.

1. Making
conversation
12 February 2020

2. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

3. @meredithcastile

4. What we’ll cover
01. Conversational thinking
02. Good conversation
03. 3 practices to try
04. A chatbot case study
THEORYPRACTICE

5. Conversational
thinking
01

6. ← Read this!

7. Conversational design accounts
for a critical element of
experience — time

8. Time, space, and structure make
up the core of UX

9. system
thinking

10. How do the parts of
this product work
together?
What are the concepts
people need to
understand to be able
to use the system?

11. system
thinking
graphical
thinking

12. How can we use space
and layout to meet X
goal or solve Y
problem?

13. system
thinking
conversational
thinking
graphical
thinking

14. How might the
give-and-take of UX
interactions unfold?

15. Content design’s superpower is
conversational thinking
01
TAKEAWAY

16. What’s a (good)
conversation?
02

17. Tone isn’t enough.
A UI that uses friendly language but
doesn’t flex in response to user inputs
or actions isn’t truly conversational.

18. Good conversational
experiences require
rhythm and turn-taking

21. What’s good in face-to-face
conversation is often good for
HCI, too

22. As in play, good conversation has
cadence, rhythm, rules
02
TAKEAWAY

23. Practices to try
03

24. 01. Book a room.
02. Wash your brain of any placeholder text.
03. Talk out loud about each button, label,
string, tooltip, etc.
04. Record your work in a table or sheet with
notes. Add your findings to a wordlist.
For voice, tone,and word
choice
Conversational UX writing

25. From Jessie James Garrett’s Elements of
User Experience (via Jonathon Colman)

26. 01. List all the elements that need to go
into the experience.
02. Rank their priority.
03. Sketch out a mobile-first wireframe
based on that priority guide.
A content-first practice
For sequenceand informationarchitecture

27. 01. Talk the user through the decisions
they need to make, step-by-step.
02. Speak aloud; write it down.
03. Repeat.
04. Partner with other designers on the
flow and layout of these
interactions.
Better after
lots of
research!
You and your user are sitting together. There’s no
interface except your conversation.
For deeply
structuralconversational
design
Best after
research
A conversation-first practice

28. Get talking, then get in earlier
in design generation
03
TAKEAWAY

29. A quick case study
04

31. CONTEXT
Growth team focused
top-of-funnel experiences
from Marketing to Product

32. ANALYTICS INSIGHT
Bigger customers convert and
retain better when they talk to
our Sales folks

33. CHALLENGE
Can we get more people* to
talk to our Sales folks?
* Qualified MMEs and up who’ve just become leads
(entered their email address on our marketing site)

35. MY BIG IDEA
Let’s demo the value of
our hero product as we
warm people up to
talking to us!

36. BUY IN! .
Lots of people across
Marketing, Sales, and
Product approved

37. NEXT QUESTION . . . .
Long or short funnel?
- Chat now
- Get a call now
- Book a call for later
- Explore what Intercom can do
- Talk with us
Optional extended
conversational warm-up
Blunt, short funnel

38. NEXT QUESTION . . . .
Is this the right
information?

39. NEXT QUESTION . . . .
How can we make
quick replies more
conversational?

40. NEXT QUESTION . . . .
Is it okay to use some industry
jargon if that’s the way our
buyers think and talk? Or is
that off-brand?

41. Grice’s maxims
QUANTITY .
Don’t give too much / too little
information
QUALITY .
Be accurate and truthful
RELEVANCE.
Stay focused on the thing at hand
✔
✔
✔
MANNER.
Be clear, concise, orderly, unambiguous
✔

42. RESULTS .
We went from 30% of leads talking
to sales to over 70%*
* Since leads who talk to sales spend 2x more and churn less, this
chatbot meaningfully drove both growth and sustainable
product health.

43. RESULTS .
Conversation wins!

44. In all things you do, remember
Grice and his maxims
04
TAKEAWAY

45. More and more, we’ll need to craft
interfaces’ logic, parameters,
intelligence, and conversational turns.*
* Good thing we’ve got it covered. ;)

46. Keep the conversation going!
meredith.castile@ and @meredithcastile