Great Voice Experiences Start with Listening: Best Practices in Research and Design for Voice User Interfaces

Great Voice Experiences
Start with Listening

“It’s like science fiction!”

Agenda
1. Why this matters
2. What we learned
3. How to research & design VUIs

129%increase in smart speaker owners 2016 to 2017

16%of U.S. adults own a smart speaker

$3.5Bsmart speaker market by 2021

“This, in a nutshell, is what it’s
like to be a woman.”

“When I have to repeat myself
over and over,
I feel like an idiot.”

“I don’t know if it’s because I’m
Black or because I’m Southern,
but those things
never understand me.”

“Voice interfaces will quickly
become a design problem more
than a technology problem.”
-Mark Webster

Methodology
Quantitative (“How”)
• Surveyed 1,000 owners
• Sept 2017, re-ran May 2018
Qualitative (“Why”)
• Diary study
• 10 in-person contextual interviews
• Sept 2017

Key findings
• High satisfaction
• Low expectations
• Onboarding is critical
• 3rd party applications confuse
• Security is a concern;
privacy less so
• Best practices do exist

88%
satisfied or very satisfied

But that window is closing…
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
3rd party app developer Smart speaker
manufacturer
Limitations of current
tech
Human error I'm not sure
Who's to blame?
9/2017 5/2018

19% have never heard of skills/actions
33% have heard of them but don’t know what
they are

50%
app users who use them
daily

40% search for apps more now
40% search for apps about the same

44%
not at all interested in
using it to apply for a credit
card

Where voice
succeeds • Simplifying multi-step inputs
• Hands-free contexts
• Bringing people together

Where voice
fails • Complex inputs
• Complex outputs
• Auditory privacy

“If it doesn’t make
it easier, we’re not
going to talk to this
thing just because
we can. If it’s more
complicated than a
website or app,
then forget it.”
-Jenna © AnswerLab 2017. All Rights Reserved

Designing
for Voice
1. Fail Gracefully
2. Be a good host
3. Use natural commands
4. Make the user feel heard
5. Design for context & continuity
6. Have some personality
7. Do your homework

Device: Would you like to track your order or place a new order?
Alysha: Yes.
Device: I’m sorry, can you please repeat what you said?
Alysha: Yes.
Device: I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Can you please repeat what
you said?
Alysha: [shrugs] No?
you said?
Alysha: [quietly to interviewer] I’m irritated now. I don’t even remember
the question.
[loudly to device] Yes.
1. Fail gracefully

“This doesn’t make any sense. They should’ve talked to
me first. I could’ve told them this wasn’t going to work.”
–Amanda
7. Do your homework

7. Do your research
Defining the problem:
• Ethnography/
contextual inquiry
• Diary studies
• Personas (design for
Jobs To Be Done
tasks), “place-
for context)
Designing the solution:
• Competitive &
analysis
• Sample dialogs
• “Wizard of Oz”
Developing the
product:
• Usability testing
• Heuristic evaluations
Deploying & evolving
the product:
• Quantitative surveys
• Voice analytics
• Competitive
• Cycle repeatedly
design process

Resources
Books
Cathy Pearl, Designing Voice User Interfaces
Erika Hall, Conversational Design
Twitter
@chrisgeison
(subscribe to my list: Voice)
Websites
answerlab.com/insights
www.voicebot.ai
Medium (there’s no voice/VUI topic, but search around)
Podcasts
The Voicebot Podcast
This Week in Voice
VUX World

@cpearl42
@brookebhawkins
@amymarquez
@kjkausha
@KatieMc__
@_marianalin
@muppetaphrodite
@jonesabi
@mulegirl
@SelectaStory
Follow these
women

https://www.google.org/crisis/puertorico-relief

Device: Welcome to Twitter Reader. I can tell you what
is happening, can read your latest mentions, the last
by you. I can also search for trends by city. When I am
trends, you can ask me to tell you more about the
can I help you?
Heather: Wait, what can you do?
Device: Here are the latest tweets from your timeline...
2. Be a good host

“That’s the other problem I have. Sometimes even the
ones that I like, I can’t remember the commands to get
them to work, and it’s [sigh], oh god, now I have to go
look it up.” –David
3. Use natural commands

Device: Do you want to log into your profile for a
faster checkout experience?
Brian: No.
Device: Sounds good!
Brian: [Laughs. To interviewer:] It’s just very
inhuman. It’s like, OK, I’m glad we agree. Just do what
I asked, you robot. It’s trying too hard.
4. Make the user feel heard

Chris: Alexa, what’s the yellow light mean?
Echo: The yellow light means you have a new message or a
notification. You can say ‘play my messages’ or ‘read my
Chris: Alexa, play my messages.
Echo: No messages from today. You have one notification.
You can say ‘read my notifications.’
Chris: Read my notifications.
Echo: [silent]
Chris: Alexa, read my notifications.
Echo: [reads notifications]
5. Design for context & continuity

“I love Dom [the voice persona for Domino’s Pizza]. I
already have a relationship with Dom [through the app
and website] and Dom has not done me wrong. I
already have a high opinion of it, so it messing up, I
know it’s going to get it right eventually. I’ve never used
the Progressive thing so it messing up on the first time
makes me think it’s a miss. If it was obviously Flo that
would’ve been cute, that would’ve upped my opinion of
it from the start. If it had used a voice I recognized.”
–Amanda
6. Have some personality

Great Voice Experiences Start with Listening: Best Practices in Research and Design for Voice User Interfaces

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