Voice User Interface Design VUI

Considering the latest advancements and the impact of social media in our environment, I think it would make sense to borrow a page from social design and re-think who should be the center or “pivot” of our designs.

As Joshua points out in his blog, social software has changed the focus of most web applications from a thread-centered approach (the way Usenet was setup and how most Forums work so that each new thread was assigned a specific topic under which the discussion took place) to a people-centered design (the way MySpace, Ryze, LinkedIn, Friendster, and others work where the individual becomes the focal point of all interactions which then spread throughout that individual’s network of friends.

From a VUI perspective, I think there are some lessons that can be learned and applied to application design. In particular I think the point about how if we live our daily lives with ourselves as the center it would also make sense for the applications around us to behave the same way makes total sense in the context of self-service.

We all know the drill: design tends to be driven by all sorts of requirements which tend to yield solutions that are business-rule-driven, ROI-driven, containment-driven, call-length-driven and from time to time, user-driven (even though I’m glad to report that tendency seems to be changing).

But to me, user-driven is not the same as people-centered. On one hand, applications can certainly be designed around user’s needs and offer things that most users want. But on the other hand, in a true step towards personalization, designs could certainly be centered on people: who they are, what they like, how they interact, what they need, etc. at a very individual level in some areas, but yet connected to that individual’s network of friends, peers, family, and acquaintances.

And as we know, once a different “pivot” is selected during the definition of an organizational scheme, the entire interaction, steps needed and flow are likely to change dramatically.

For example, what would a financial system sound like with people as the pivot point? Is there a “shared object“ in our systems around which people would like to connect?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under Dialog Design, Information Architecture, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.