We’ve all have heard the horror stories about poorly design systems as well as seen people’s reactions whenever the topic of self-service automation and IVRs come up. Let’s be honest, businesses deploy automated solutions to reduce their costs, and customers that are aware of this, see automation as a reflection of poor service and lack [...]
And what better way to start this new season than with some linguistic fun. We all know the critical role they play in the world of speech and voice interactions, so I think this little homage is very well deserved.
It feels really good to be back after taking a break! And to celebrate it, we’re changing our look. The first few months after having a baby are always rewarding, challenging and enlightening. And time sure does fly when that happens… But with the influx of new and exciting projects, the design lessons and ideas [...]
Interesting how the world around us can teach us many design lessons. In particular, I spent some time with my family in the California area, where I had a chance to experience design without intent. This happened at a sea-themed park where after watching some shows and enjoying some rides I started noticing the overwhelming [...]
I was recently listening to a talk by Simon Sinek about how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. His premise is pretty simple yet very powerful, and can be better understood by looking at his “Golder Circle” and its three layers: The core “why” (the cause), the middle “how” (the value proposition) and the [...]
I just realized that for some reason the digital handout for my presentation isn’t available on SpeechTEK’s site. While I sort that out, I though about proactively posting the deck for anyone wanting to download a copy. The session is entitled “Lessons in Multimodal Interaction Design”, and particularly, the topic I’m going to cover is [...]
I was recently watching a presentation from Dan Ariely regarding the nature of human decision making and how we all are “predictably irrational”. The example I found most interesting and relevant was a little experiment he ran based on an ad for the Economist magazine and the various subscription choices it offered. Here’s the setup; [...]
The role of “experience” designers and “user interface” designers has been much harder to justify than other designer disciplines such as graphic design or industrial design. For that reason, I find it interesting that the topic of value added by designers has been coming up more and more often, particularly when customers are pretty adamant [...]
I was recently asked about the presence of humor in IVR applications. To be honest with you, I haven’t ran across too many of those, other than the one implemented at Travelocity. One of their menu choices is to hear a gnome joke. On top of it, they allowed user participation by inviting people to [...]
I normally get my fair share of laughs (and tears) from listening to user call recordings and their experiences while using automated systems. But a friend of mine just sent me one from a user interacting with a call center agent. We all know that the use of jargon and technical terminology can cause confusion [...]
