Voice tech #12

VUI DESIGN 101
Nov 22 | Design Workshop

Our Mission: To foster a community of
Product Managers, Designers and Engineers
in Toronto and beyond, who are interested in
voice-first product development, create
industry standards and encourage knowledge
sharing between businesses and practitioners.

🔝
❓
🔤
🔨
🖥
PROGRESS RECAP
WHAT WE ARE BUILDING
VUI DESIGN BEST PRACTICES
INVOCABLE WORKSHOP
TECHNICAL OVERVIEW
AGENDA

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DE-RISKING  
NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
1
Understand user
needs
2
Design value
proposition
3
Refine VUI
4
Build
5
Evolve

Voice Product development cycle

Value proposition design: Ideation

Value proposition design: Sample Dialogues

Value proposition design: Role play

Value proposition design: Whiteboarding

Product Vision
VALUE
PROPOSITION

PENGUIN READ ALONG
Penguin Read Along helps Students who
want to learn English by reading books
out loud, which helps students practice
reading and listening at the same time,
get used to different accents and avoid
embarrassment when mispronouncing
new vocabulary.

READ-ALONG FEATURE SET
Read along - Alexa reads out loud the text, while the student is
reading “with their eyes”.
Pause, Play.
Speed: Slower, Faster, Normal - Alexa will read slower or
faster.
Repeat: Last sentence, Last paragraph, Last page.
Translate: Last sentence, Last paragraph, Last page.
Start from Page #, Go To Page # - e.g. “Alexa, start form page
5”.
Definition - e.g. “Alexa, define “constituency” (Alexa provides
the word definition).
Accents - the user is able to pick a British or American accent
for Alexa to read in. User can switch between accents while
reading.

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Efficient communication relies on the
assumption that there’s an
undercurrent of cooperation between
both conversational participants.
GRICE’S
COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

Quality Maxim: Tell the Truth!

Quantity Maxim:  
Give maximum information with
minimum effort

Relation Maxim:  
Be relevant and act accordingly

Manner Maxim:  
Be clear and not obscure

PROMPTS & THEIR 
CONVERSATIONAL
COMPONENTS
In the conversation design process, prompt
writing is part of both high-level and detailed
design.  
Conversational components are all  
the things that make up a prompt, like
acknowledgements or questions.
•Acknowledgements
•Apologies
•Commands
•Confirmations
•Discourse marker
•Earcons
•Endings
•Errors
•Greetings
•Questions
•Suggestions

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FOCUS ON THE USER
Make the user the center of
attention, not your persona.  
User-focused text keeps the
conversation on track. It’s  
more crisp and to-the-point.

NO MONOLOGS
Be informative, but keep
responses concise. Let users
take their turn. Don’t go into
heavy-handed details unless the
user will clearly benefit from it.

VARIATION
Craft a variety of responses just
like a person would. This makes
the conversation feel more
natural and keeps the experience
from getting stale.

SIMPLE PLAIN
LANGUAGE
Plain and simple language
has the broadest appeal,
making it accessible to
people of all backgrounds.

USE CONTRACTIONS
Spelling out words like "cannot"
and "do not" can sound punishing
and harsh.

DON’T PUT WORDS  
IN YOUR
USERS MOUTHS
Users shouldn’t have to be taught
how to speak to your persona.
Instead of training users to use
specific words or phrases and
adapt to what users would
naturally say.

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1.Helps you write conversations
2.Keeps your tone and personality consistent
3.Gives users a clear picture of who is
communicating
PERSONA DEFINITION

Characteristics:
• Patient
• Energetic
• Clever
• Kind
Character:
Teacher
reactive
R P
proactive
general
G I
intimate
direct
D A
affable
expected
E S
serendipitous
AGENCY
KNOWLEDGE
TONE
RESPONSE
READ ALONG
PERSONA DEFINITION

•Find a partner and role-play  
the conversation
•Speak out loud, use natural conversation
•Transcribe your dialog flow
SAMPLE DIALOGS

1.Canonical “Happy path”
2.First time experience
3.Return User  
(shortened welcome, varied responses)
4.Conversation Repair
SAMPLE DIALOGS

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Challenges of HIFI
prototyping
Platform agnostic?
Google only supports four voices where Alexa
supports multiple voices with different
accents 
Alexa does not automatically forward the user
utterance to your skill even, how do you
manage the user having to always say the
invocation name in the prototype?

Challenges of  
HIFI prototyping
Which tool?
(Ideally there would be logo of all of these
prototyping tool)
Invocable(storyline)
Dialogflow
Pullstring (https://www.pullstring.com/)
Sayspring (https://www.sayspring.com/)
Tortu (https://tortu.io/)
TalkSim(talksim.com)
BotSociety(https://botsociety.io/)
BotMock(https://botmock.com/)
BotTalk https://bottalk.de/

Challenges of HIFI
prototyping
Our recommendation
There is no perfect tool 
Our evaluation criteria:
•Testing on device
•Access to platform features
•The cost of converting prototype to production
•High level view of the conversation
•Agnostic
•Cost
Invocable Dialogflow
Testing on device B A
Access to platform features B A
The cost of converting prototype to production A A
High level view of the conversation A F
Agnostic F F

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