Ozlem Williams - Product Designer, Voice and CUI

1. OZLEM WILLIAMS
PRODUCT DESIGNER
VOICE & CUI
linkedin.com/in/ozlemwilliams

2. Babylon’s mission is to put an accessible and
affordable health service in the hands of every
person on earth.
By combining the ever-growing power of AI with the best medical expertise of
humans, Babylon can deliver unparalleled access to healthcare, including
personalised health assessments, treatment advice and face-to-face
appointments with a doctor 24/7.
$550 million round of funding.
The largest-ever fundraise in Europe or in the US for digital health delivery.

3. We are hiring!
ozlem.williams@babylonhealth.com

4. Personality for Voice

5. GUI
User has the control. If they don’t like the
experience, they can basically quit
anytime or try to press another button.
VUI
is kind of a prison for the user. The Voice
has the control and if things go wrong,
users can easily find themselves in a
vicious circle.
User interface

6. 😎
“I already have a working GUI, so I can
simply add voice input and TTS output
and that’s a conversation design,
right?”
🤓
Assuming that conversation refers to
only what is spoken or heard and
ignoring the fact that conversation is
multimodal will not lead you to the right
product or project.
Common misconception

7. Who?
Why?
What?
How to start

8. • Define what you want to achieve with
Voice
• Is it a ‘nice to have’ thing and just
another medium for your business?
• Do you want to do something with
Voice because everybody is talking
about it?
Why?

9. • Create your user persona/personas
• Do user research
• Understand their needs and
expectations
• Use your previous data.
1. Work with the Customer Support team
(Interviews, Shadowing, Intents and
Utterance workshops)
2. Analyse the FAQs
3. Talk to the Marketing Team, they will
have the brand tone of voice.
Who?

10. • What is your product?
• A brand, a service, an app or a new
voice platform?
• What are you planning to deliver through
Voice?
• Is it going to be a long term
commitment?
• Or is it a one shot project?
• Which surface? (Home, TV, Auto,
Mobile, Wearable…)
What?

11. • What is the space? What is your
product market fit (Over 100.000 skills
& actions)
• What are others doing? (Westworld-
Netflix Alexa Skill/Webby Awards)
• How are they talking? How is their tone
of voice? (BBC Kids-Actions on
Google)
• What traits do their personalities
exhibit? (Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Google
Assistant)
• How can you make your Voice heard
in the crowd? (BBC News India-
Actions on Google)
• What are the opportunities? (Babylon
Health)
• Is there any gap that you can fill and
own? (Fintech, Games, Podcast…)
Competitive Landscape

12. Competitive Landscape

13. If it’s a Voice product that is due to be
created for an existing brand, keep in
mind your brand’s tone of voice. It’s
always a good idea to talk to your
marketing and content teams.
If you’re planning to create a new brand
such as an app helping to make people’s
lives easier, then think about what the
tone of voice should be like from the
beginning.
Tone of voice

14. It is crucial to define a
rounded persona in
order to enable a
consistent UX and build
trust.
👫👭👬
One of the jobs of a
conversation designer is
to work in the mindset of
a screenwriter. If you
want to write a dialog,
you need to know who
your character is. So,
personas will basically
be the tools that you
need.
&👮()*
And to be able to have a
unique voice and
personality, you need a
very well defined
persona. Otherwise you
will end up having sort of
a vaguely automated
IVR that doesn’t
distinguish itself from the
pack.
+
Why do we need a personality?

15. Step 1
Gather all the adjectives that represent
your company or brand (e.g., friendly,
technologically competent). And then
select the ones you want your users to
experience when they interact with your
action, skill or product.
Step 2
Refine that list of adjectives down to a
few key ones that represent your
personas key personality traits. It might
be helpful to use archetypes for this
exercise.
Persona Development
Lorem Ipsum

16. Step 3
Think of different characters who have these
qualities (e.g., a librarian, a concierge, a teacher).
Remember it doesn’t always have to be a
person. It could also be a humanised creature, a
dinosaur, a robot, a fictional character, even an AI
etc.
Persona Development

17. Step 4
Choose one of them that matches your
project. Write a simple description that
describes what this persona really is.
Focus on what it would say, write, do
or behave.
Don’t worry about age or gender at this
point. They don’t really make a
personality different, or form its
borders. In fact it can limit you when
looking for the right voice casting.
Persona Development

18. Step5
Write a monologue for your persona.
This will help the voice cast to get in the
character.
Step 6
Now use imagery to represent your
persona. This can help you to keep a
persona in mind when writing to it.
Persona Development

19. Write, write, write…
Write several sample
dialogs and shape and
reshape your personality
✍
Always keep this simple
question at the top of your
mind:
👉
“What would this persona
say or do in this situation?”
🤔

20. Every word will help build your personality

21. Guidelines
After setting up your personality you need to create your policy guideline
and a very detailed style guide. So any content that your team create can
be consistent, time after time and everyone writes under the same
umbrella.

22. Casting the right voice🎙
Your options
You can chose one
of the voices that
the voice platforms
provide
You can chose your
own voice cast and
do all the recordings
with that voice
You could also
consider working
with a celebrity

23. The voice has to fit

25. Scaling
If your strategy is scaling worldwide,
then you need to plan the localisation
part of the project. Direct translations
will not bring the user satisfaction that
you require.
Local conversation designers and
writers should create your local
personality in line with your global
guidelines.

26. A few learnings…
• Sound effects and music will
help you to create a better
user experience
• Being self deprecating will
help users to tolerate the
shortcomings, bugs and
fallbacks
• If you have a screen, use
emojis but don’t overuse
them and don’t use
controversial ones. Also
consider using images,
graphics, typography…
• Always watch out:
Kids, genders,
religions,
ethnicities,
traditions,
food
• Prepare a policy guideline
and stick to it
• Always use natural language
• Be aware of the vernacular
• Write short, always find a
smarter way of saying it
• Surprise the user