Make it snappy: A content-led approach to conversational UI

​Conversational experiences are seeing a surge in popularity, but the processes and systems we use to create them are still emerging. Often, the process gets codified as writing a draft script of the conversation, creating a linear decision tree to map out the logic behind it, then bolting on UI elements if needed.

​This works ok for smaller systems, but at scale, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain flexibility and capture the rationale behind design decisions.

​The result: verbose, inflexible conversations that try to include every possible piece of information (aka ‘kitchen sink design’). 

​So how can we create more concise, relevant and malleable conversations? This session will explore a high-level approach to prioritizing and choreographing content across the audial, textual and visual elements that go into a conversational experience.

​As well as improving the experience for users, this also provides a framework for teams to document the thought process behind their conversational design — information that could one day inform better machine reasoning.

​👋 Meet the speaker

​Steph Rymer is a Lead Experience Designer at Verizon in New York, where she’s focused on creating scalable frameworks for multi-channel conversational design. She has spent 10+ years working in design and research, across the UK, China, Australia, and the US. Steph is happiest when absorbing complex data through immersive research, visualizing the ecosystems behind it, and using these insights to inspire design. She’s applied this across a range of domains, such as power systems engineering, clinical trials, and telecommunications. She is also an active organizer of community events — in both music and design. Her background is in Computer Science, which she studied at Cambridge University.

​📅 This free event is hosted by the 2021 IAC: the information architecture conference. More information at: https://www.theiaconference.com/