Thread by @mulegirl

Hey, let's talk about conversational design.

I was so excited to find Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro's article on cybernetics and design earlier this week because it so cogently connects so many of the things I've been thinking about.

dubberly.com/articles/cyber…

On the one hand I wish I'd rediscovered cybernetics while I was working on my book Conversational Design, and on the other—well, these are meant to be very short, practical books and my editors already had their work trimming my tangents cut out for them.

A year and a half later, it seems like a lot of people (but not all clearly) are still missing the point with conversational design.

Your system isn't necessarily more conversational if it talks to people or texts with them. Adding these modes may even make it less so.

Conversation is fundamentally a goal-directed exchange between two+ parties in a shared context that works because it follows implicit conventions.

For an interaction to be conversational means that it follows certain conventions and both parties are cooperating towards a goal.

Starting design from the technology, as many are doing, is the opposite of creating a conversational system.

You have to start from the person, their goals, and their context.

The best use of design and technology isn't to pretend to be a talking person, it's to better reflect your customer's context, goals, and needs.

Many so-called conversational systems are frustrating because they do the opposite and require the human to guess system needs.

A huge mistake designers make, still, is to assume that the interaction you're designing has complete command of someone's attention.

This is why field research (remote or in person) is essential. Bringing someone into a lab won't reveal their true context of interaction.

Another critical point is that the design process itself needs to be a conversation—cooperative exchange in an active context towards a shared goal.

We still think of design too much as individuals creating artifacts. Documentation should play a supporting role.

Making the design process more interactive represents a massive culture shift. Even when we're talking about the design of massively complex systems, we still define roles in terms of the documentation someone produces.

There is a huge discomfort with "invisible" work.

I mean how often do you hear people describe their days in terms of "meetings" and "work".

To be fair, meetings are rarely designed to be productive in this way and productivity is often judged based on the artifacts an individual produces.

This is counterproductive.

Your organization's ability to design effective human-centered interactive systems is limited by how well everyone is communicating.

This is basically Conway's Law. And I reformulated it slightly.

A harmonious interface is the product of functional, interdisciplinary communication and clear, well-informed decision-making.

Systems with visible seams are the result of hand-offs and unresolved arguments.

So, if you're wondering why there hasn't been as much payoff from all the hype about chatbots and and voice interfaces it's because organizations haven't *really* been doing conversational design or designing conversational systems. (Some have, sure).

A lot of people have been putting a lot of effort in creating systems that appear to be more conversational on the surface, but actually don't meet the real, underlying criteria:
* cooperative
* goal-oriented
* quick
* clear
* turn-based
(and most importantly!)

*error-tolerant

If you're interested in this stuff, you can listen to the talk I gave at Confab. The video doesn't have the slides, so no need to watch unless you want to read the subtitles or see my large physical gestures:

vimeo.com/335957544

Conversation and documentation represent two different sets of cultural values. Internet life smashes the two sets up in a way that gets confusing when we aren't clear about why we're optimizing for one set over another.

Literate values can really muck up interactive design.

We *feel* the difference between conversing and writing even when they both involve the exact same physical movement of typing.

Conversing (texting/tweeting/etc.) is fun. Writing (email/blog posts/reports) is excruciating. Weird, right?

It's not just the length of the message.

We are continually making our personal and professional lives harder and sadder because of this embedded idea that written style is always "better" than conversational style and that composing things in words is something that needs to be done off in a corner alone.

There's a persistent sense that collaborative composition is somehow "cheating". And you need to go off by yourself until you have a respectable draft. What a waste of time and tears.

Of course, there are times to sit alone and write, BUT…

If you're doing something like web copy or interface language, think how much easier and more fun it would be to talk about the topic, record the conversation, and edit the transcript.

The result would not be deadly boring, either.

If you see website copy that's too long, complex, abstract, etc. I bet someone sat alone in a corner and wrote it.

And then a draft document got passed around with tracked changes. The people working on it never interacted with each other.

That is the slow train to sucktown.

And then the document or the copy turns into a weird territory battle because people want to claim author credit.

And if you try to change something on the site people get all weird about it because they are treating it like a work for posterity, not a conversation.

Think of a website or an app or any interactive system like a company rep picking up the phone to talk to a customer every time.

Why get all precious about the words? You just want the communication to be effective, context appropriate, and on brand etc.

Contributing to an interactive system that improves iteratively based on continuous learning about user needs (listening) is different from authoring a document.

Think about which set of values is appropriate when.

The irony of sitting alone in a room writing a book about being conversational was not lost on me.

You can get it here, though. And I encourage that.
abookapart.com/products/conve…