Voice User Interface Design VUI

The Golden Circle – How to inspire users

eolvera — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:57:34 +0000

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 external “what” (products or services).

He discovered that leaders (both individuals as well as companies) think, act and communicate in the exact opposite way (or direction) than everyone else, starting with the “why” instead of the “what” as mostly everyone else does. When you start from the outside, you deal with reasons and logic with the hope of triggering a reaction. But when you start from the inside, you deal with emotions and beliefs which drive decision making and then simply use the facts and data as justification.

The power behind this idea is that communicating and interacting with others that share your belief (the “why”), you trigger gut decisions that change behaviors. At that point, the “what” becomes somewhat irrelevant.

Thinking about this in the concept of prompt design, I realized that most prompts follow the same uninspiring sequence of what-how-why where we first tell users what it is that’s going to happen, how they are going to interact, only to hope that they understand our reasons and play along with the system — so we shouldn’t be surprised if users push back and run for the operator option.

Does this seem familiar?

“Please listen carefully to the following choices (what) before making a selection (how)(why).”

I think that by inverting the order on some of these prompts, we can connect with users more easily. If you notice, some of the latest pre-transfer designs already follow a similar phrasing structure:

“So that I can transfer to the right person (why) please tell me (how) what’s the reason for your call (what)

So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that these types of prompts have much higher acceptance rates.

Think about it. If you combine this concept with the new age of transparency, why can’t companies and their systems be up front and say “We believe that you should decide how to interact with us. We believe in using technology to reduce our costs so we can pass the savings to you and our self-service solutions reflect that. So please tell me, what can I help you with?”

SpeechTEK – Multimodal Interaction Design Slides

eolvera — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:58:59 +0000

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 “The Coexistence of IVRs and Small Screens”. If you’re attending SpeechTEK, I would love to have you join us tomorrow, August 3rd, at session D203 from 1:45 pm – 2:30 pm.

See you there!

The importance of irrelevant choices

eolvera — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:21:43 +0000

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; suppose you’re offered three options:

1) Digital edition: $59
2) Print edition: $125
3) Print AND Digital edition: $125

Which would you pick?

Well, he found that 84% of respondents chose option number 3 (combo), 16% preferred option number 1 (digital only), and no one selected option 2 (print only). Which did you choose?

Now, considering those numbers, option 2 is irrelevant to users, hence can be removed, right?

(by now you probably know this is a tricky question). He did exactly that and repeated the experiment with the two remaining choices. It just so happens that after doing that, 68% of respondents chose option 1! Even though we could all argue that it was the obvious (less expensive) choice, the interesting part is that the previous option 2 – the one that no one chose – made a huge difference on people’s choice.

This really made me think in terms of UI design. We often find ourselves trying to define which elements belong in a menu, how to order them, and which items to remove/replace with others more “relevant”.

Should we blindly assume that choices with no or very little usage have no impact on the remaining choices? Is there a way we can improve the performance of all “relevant” choices by adding irrelevant ones as part of the set? Could it be that our brains are better tuned to compare choices in pairs so that when two out of three options are easy to compare we tend to make that comparison and chose one of those options, even if by doing that we end up ignoring a third choice even if it aligns closer to our goals and priorities?

Very interesting stuff. Here’s the full session for your viewing pleasure:

Are designers really necessary?

eolvera — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:47:00 +0000

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 about designing systems/interactions themselves simply because they “know the business” or have been doing maintenance on an existing system “for a long time”.

Even amongst peers there has been debate recently about whether the industry has been either making systems “hard to build” in an attempt to retain control over those systems and to create dependency (aka. keep the money flowing) or not being as diligent when it comes to educating customers and allowing them to maintain their systems themselves.

In my opinion, I don’t think there any sort of industry conspiracy going on nor I see designers making things harder than they need to justify their jobs or to serve a hidden agenda.

I think part of the problem relies on the fact that our profession isn’t as well defined or as structured as other design professions, meaning that in our midst we have linguists, psychologists, engineers, designers, sociologists, cognitive scientists, human factors practitioners, etc. that even though share similar goals, can tackle a problem from very distinct approaches, with their own processes and even “vocabulary” which can explain some of the confusion customers might experience.

I think the other culprit is the current economic environment. Companies might be inclined to pick one technology over another simply based on cost, not on customer experience or interaction capabilities. Furthermore, companies are squeezing their budgets as much as they can while trying to keep more control over their projects.

I’m convinced that if they could design the solutions themselves, they probably would, but the truth is they simply can’t. But they don’t realize they can’t! So that’s where I think designers like us come into play to help them learn about our design processes and methodologies in a way that they may be confident enough to contribute, which in return allows designers to obtain very rich feedback out of them.

I really liked the way Mark Baskinger explained the differences he sees between industrial designers and interaction designers:

“[Customers] may think they are directing, but really what they are doing is learning, and as a designer we’re interpreting their direction as sort of boundaries, wishes and desires we can operate within to really challenge the opportunity and do some really good design.”

I think that if designers are conscious about this situation and continue to play the role of sounding boards that customers can leverage to bounce ideas off of, help plan strategies and the guide them through the process, the ones that will benefit the most are the ones that really keep us all in business — our users.

Seductive Design and Humor

eolvera — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:35:35 +0000

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 submit jokes. You can hear it by dialing 888.Travelocity, say “”No” on the first prompt, and then say “gnome joke of the day”.

Aside from the entertainment aspect of this type of design, I realized that the same question seems to be popping around in other aspects of User Interface Design. It seems many designers are transitioning from a notion of “self service” or “automation” to one of “user experience” and “engagement”.

In particular, I’ve seen a special type of emphasis on designers trying to marry appeal with usability. Some studies have shown that first impressions have a longer lasting effect than initially thought, and that it not only affects someone’s willingness to try the system but also to push through usability barriers, ending up in a more satisfying experience.

Interestingly enough, in the case of websites, researchers found that users rate high appeal as more interesting, easier to use, easier to navigate, more accurate, more trustworthy, and overall more satisfying than a low appealing counterpart (even if their usability is superior). Hence designers are arguing that aspects of psychology and human behavior such as persuasion should be (and are being) added to all designs (digital and physical).

Think about some of the things you know about people: they like to interact, they like to be entertained, they are curious, etc.

So, how can you leverage that? For example, if we focus on the notion of being funny and playful, they’ve found that humor and surprises can be addictive and exciting, increasing the desire of a user to use a system and to be more forgiving towards unexpected situations (I recently talked about the use of humor in error messages).

Who hasn’t seen twitter’s fail whale?

Or what about or flickr’s “error page” which you could color and send back to enter a contest for a Pro account?

I’ll argue that there’s definitively value in humor, but that humor for humor sake should not the intent. We should rather focus on how to improve the experience and make the interactions more “sticky” by carefully planning how to infuse our designs with elements like humor. Some designers like Andy Budd are calling this “Seductive Design”.

Below you’ll find the video and slides of one of his recent presentations which I found extremely fascinating. Enjoy!

Seductive Design

Be careful what you brand for

eolvera — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:31:44 +0000

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 on the user’s mind, but this is one of those rare cases where the problem comes from the branding decisions the company made.

To be honest with you, at first I though it was a prank call, but then over the course of the call you can hear traffic noise on the background (the user seems to have been calling from a public phone), and even some side-speech towards the end, so I think this was indeed a real caller with real concerns and confusion.

Just a little bit of background first. The name of the company is Telcel, and they are one of the largest cell phone service providers in Mexico, and as most service providers in the US, they also provide pre-paid plan alternatives. Just like AT&T has branded such plans as ” GoPhone“, in this case they opted for the name “Amigo”, which when translated literally means “Friend”, and that’s where the confusion started…

Disclaimer: If you speak Spanish, I suggest listening to the whole call first. Otherwise, simply scroll down and read the a translated transcription of some interaction snippets that are a good testament of what can go wrong when you have confusing product names.

Priceless conversation points:

[User] “When I want to make a call, it tells me that my Amigo’s balance has been used-up. But I want to know about my balance, not my friend’s balance”
[Agent] (you can almost hear her laughing her head off)
[User] “I’m not interested in knowing if my friend has a balance, I want to know mine”

At that point, the agent kindly explains to the user that if she’s consulting the balance from her phone, then that means the balance she is hearing belongs to her, and that “Amigo” is simply the name of the service.

Nevertheless, the user continues:

“It also tells me that I can add $30 of airtime with an Amigo. So, do I have to give $30 to my friend to do so?”

Amazing, isn’t it? Well, aside from the funny aspects of it, the other part that I noticed is that even though the agent understood the situation and could probably tell that this user is struggling with the concepts, she doesn’t adapt her conversation to the current situation and sticks to scripted messages, full of more branded terms and jargon such as “to make a deposit you’ll require an electronic record or re-charge card”, “you will need to visit a location to buy an Amigo card to enter it into your phone, scratching the access code and dialing *333″

In my last post I talked about the elements that all recovery strategies should have, but in this case, even though the agent explained the situation and provided a solution, I think she left the empathy out of the question, probably leaving our “Amiga” even more confused.

The Art (and Humor) of Error Messages

eolvera — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:26:54 +0000

Error recovery strategies and the verbiage around them has always been a hot topic of debate. We’ve all heard the classical “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.” and “I’m sorry I didn’t understand you.” messages that are normally implemented as global prefixes to further attempts to help users get back on track. Some other designers prefer to eliminate this generic approach and opt instead for a more context-sensitive alternative, where based on the possible cause of error, you could very well eliminate them completely and simply attempt to reprompt the user in a more natural way, with maybe a slight change in intonation to convey the meaning of “Hello, are you listening to me?” in a subtle way.

In regards to the content of the error messages themselves, we’ve all heard that they should not simply be repetitions of what the user has already heard, but rather slightly different variations based on the context and possible cause of the problem in the first place, so as to try to help them recover: is it due to a noisy environment? is the user providing me more information than I’m requesting? are they struggling to find it? do they need more time? are they getting confused by what I’m asking?, etc.

Of course, errors are nothing new and are particularly prevalent in the software and web world, where the value of the message and its ability to help users recover is very often dubious (or flat out ridiculous), resulting in bad user experiences. Some examples:

“Unknown Error -1″

“Keyboard error (press F1 to resume)”

“Wrong parameter”

“An unexpected error occurred, because an error of type – 110 occurred.”

“It is not necessary to dial 0 after the country code for this country.” (If they know that, why not simply recognize it, remove/ignore the 0 and move on?)

Some others here and here.

With that in mind, I have to say I found it very refreshing when my Firefox browser recently crashed and I was presented with the following message:

I found a few interesting things about it that made me think about my own error prompts:

It’s unexpected - talk about user expectations. You know having an error (or crashing in this case) is not fun. Yet the unexpected style distracts you and in my case made me feel a little better about the situation (ok, ok, I’ll admit it, it made me smile)

Even though it had a funny side, it was still useful. It clearly states what the problem was in terms I understand (my windows and tabs), plus it gives me a possible reason for the problem which might help me avoid the problem in the future (a recent web page)

It provides solutions on how to fix it

Reduce the negative impact of an error + clear description of error + clear explanation of the possible cause + alternatives to solve it. When was the last time your error messages achieved all these goals?

Back from the break

eolvera — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:24:30 +0000

Wow, I didn’t realize how long it’s been since my last post. I guess the good news is that it has been because I’ve been really busy, which for you means new and very interesting stuff is coming soon with regards to VUI design in even wider (and more recent) contexts such as vehicles, multimodality, iPhones, Blackberries, etc.

It’s great to be back!

Objectified food for thought – Part 1

eolvera — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:22:35 +0000

As you know, I enjoy looking at other fields that might have design elements that could be leveraged in a speech and multimodal world.

My latest discovery was the film “Objectified” by Gary Hustwit. Even though the documentary is centered around the topic of Industrial Design and the process by which well known products are designed, created and injected into the marketplace, there are some great quotes by various designers that I couldn’t help but feel compelled to share with you and analyze in an attempt to find a way to apply them to our field. With so many quotes, I though this might be better off divided in parts so people can add comments and share their own insights and experiences. Let’s get started:

“What we really need to do to design is look at the extremes – the weakest, with arthritis, the athlete, the strongest, the fastest – because if we understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself.” — Dan Formosa, Design and Research, Smart Design

Wow, what a way to start this topic! After readings this one, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about perpetuating the common design approach of the 80-20 rule. We try to capture what 20% of the population which will use 80% of the features might do, add support for a few other common “corner cases”, and ignore the really obscure and unlikely scenarios altogether. This point definitively made me wonder what if… what if we were to do it backwards, design by looking at those extremes - the distracted caller, the multitasking mom, the user that requires extra time to process the information or respond - and letting the middle take care of itself.

Case in point, the creation of the Oxo kitchenware, a peeler originally designed for people with arthritis that turned out to be more comfortable and easier to use for everyone!

“What we’re really always looking for whenever we design are ways we can improve the way people do things or improve their daily life… without them really even knowing, ever thinking about it.” — Davin Stowell, CEO & Founder, Smart Design

Another quote from Smart Design, but this time addressing the reasons behind our designs. How often are we really looking for ways in which we can improve how people do things or improve their lives? How often can we articulate this need and help evaluate it in the context of other seemingly more important needs such as completion rates, retention and automation? Can we really tell we designed something that not only solved someone’s issue or allowed them to complete their task but that in fact had a positive impact on them without them even knowing? Quite a challenge (and intrinsic motivator for me)!

“Good design should be innovative. Good design should make a product useful. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design will make a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is long-lived. Good design is consistent in every detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible.” — Dieter Rams, Former Design Director, Braun

I think Mr. Rams said it perfectly. Seeing what goes on inside the minds of product creators behind brands like Braun and their philosophy definitively makes me appreciate the responsibility of a designer.

That’s it for part 1. Stay tuned for more quotes and nuggets of wisdom. And if you get a chance, watch the movie, you won’t regret it (and your users will appreciate it)!

Where did my option go

eolvera — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:57:33 +0000

During any Requirement’s Gathering process, one of the hardest yet most critical steps involves finding out the features that will be offered to the users. Figuring out the final set normally involves talking to agents, listening to the different business units, looking at statistics, etc.

Furthermore, if the customer is migrating from an existing system to a new one, part of the process also involves reevaluating the set of features currently being offered to determine which ones should be migrated and which ones should be eliminated for good (which very often becomes a challenge by itself since customers tend to feel that by doing so, they are “loosing” functionality)

Some of the tools available to us include performing a Usability test on an existing system, doing a benchmark analysis to compare features offered by competitors, looking at usage data to determine the frequency of usage of each existing feature, or setting up focus groups or customer surveys to explore the likely usage of new features.

So yes, there are way to figure out how often they might use a certain feature or what they might think about it, but how do you gauge how deeply your users care about those features?

Well, while watching a recent Burger King stunt (an interesting mix of market research and marketing) in which they made one of their US branches a “Whooper Free Zone”, and recorded via hidden cameras the reactions of their customers upon being told that they were no longer serving Whooper sandwiches (see video below).

This stunt made me think about a tool that designers don’t use very often: Subtraction.

By that I mean that very often we run complex studies and champion-challenger scenarios (aka A-B designs) to figure out what the best combination of items might be, or what the impact of adding one more choice will have on a user base. But how often do you test the impact of removing a choice both from a performance as well as from an emotional perspective? (and no, I’m not talking about those bad designs where options are so buried down or words are so poorly chosen that it’s almost impossible for users to find what they need or realize what they need is in front of their eyes (or ears).

So, next time you’re thinking about your users and the options they need, consider subtraction as one more tool in your ever-growing UI toolkit. And if you’ve used before, I’d be very interested in knowing what your results were.