Design: Voice User Interface Design

It’s a great time to be a voice user interface (VUI) designer. Voice user interfaces are becoming more and more common in our daily lives. To ensure great user experiences, it’s crucial that designers lead the way in this space.

Many visual designers and interaction designers who are interested in becoming VUI designers are well placed to switch from designing more traditional graphic user interfaces (GUIs) to designing VUIs. Although all UX design disciplines share certain principles, there are some things about VUI design that differ from GUI design for Web or mobile apps. In this article, I’ll cover the main things you should keep in mind when designing VUIs. Read More

Selected sections from Chapter 5 of Cathy Pearl’s new book Designing Voice User Interfaces: Principles of Conversational Experiences. 2017 O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Excerpts from Chapter 5: Advanced Voice User Interface Design

[This] Chapter [covers advanced] voice user interface (VUI) design [topics]. Here, we take a look at what will make [your VUIs] engaging, easy to use, and successful.

Siri and the Amazon Echo are both examples of popular VUIs. The Echo has recently received a lot of praise about its interface. Given that the two systems can do many similar things, why is the Echo often a better user experience? One reason is that the Echo was designed with voice in mind from the beginning—that’s its sole purpose. Siri, by comparison, is just one more way to interact with your iPhone. Read More

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”—Arthur C. Clarke

People usually interpret Clarke’s quotation as a positive recognition of the power of technology. The new user interfaces (UIs) of gestures, voice, and chat aspire to magic, enabling people to control technology without any apparent, screen-based user interface. For some designers, this quotation also represents the future of user interfaces. Imran Chaudhri, UI designer for Apple’s iPhone has said:

“I see a natural progression from knobs and dials, to clicks and taps, to swipes and gestures, to voice and emotion.”

Magic is powerful, but as we all know, it also has a dark side. Could today’s trend toward magical user experiences that rely on gestures, voice, and chat spell doom for users? In this article, I’ll take you on a “Magical Mystery Tour” of these new user interfaces. Read More