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

Voice delivers the special power of human connection. According to data about how voice assistance is reshaping consumer behavior on Think with Google, 41% of people who own voice interfaces feel as though they are conversing with a friend or another person. These friends assist people in tasks ranging from checking the weather in the morning to switching the lights off at night.

We explored a voice intervention for the task of learning a new language and designed a Voice User Interface (VUI) called Chattie that helps language learners practice real-world conversations and, in turn, improve their vocabulary. When designing Chattie, we used various design methods and iteratively improved the user interface based on our learnings from multiple usability tests. Read More