October 2022 Summaries

When designing conversational flows, follow-up intents can be used to add nested context, but they become cumbersome to manage as complexity increases. In contrast, Voiceflow allows for more flexibility and reusability through intent scoping, enabling designers to reference reusable intents without creating new ones. Parameters in Dialogflow are structured data that can be used to perform logic or generate responses, whereas Voiceflow uses variables to achieve similar outcomes dynamically. IF statements in Dialogflow require coding, while Voiceflow uses backend logic checks as routers, making it more efficient for building rich prototypes and shipping contextual assistants at scale.

The rise of the conversation design team is a result of the professionalization of the conversational AI industry. As the ROI of conversational AI increased, investment in tools and talent grew, leading to the creation of dedicated in-house conversational AI teams that own end-to-end assistant design across business lines. This shift from vertical vendors and small teams of developers to federated team approaches has allowed for quicker iteration and continuous improvement, cost savings through streamlining technology vendor stacks, and reduced redundancy of work. The conversation designer title is often overloaded, and breaking down the role into its functional components can help define it. Full stack conversation designers are becoming more common, working on all three components of the assistant: dialog model, NLU model, and response model. A framework has been developed to map the evolution of a conversation design team in terms of team structure and specialization. This framework allows for independent workflows, not silos, and enables teams to work independently through their own measure and refinement loop. The shift from development to conversation design involves recognizing equal partners between design and development, with design managing the "what" and "why," and development focusing on making the design a reality. Conversation design is poised to become a major frontier of design, with no limits to its potential impact as daily interactions with brands through assistants continue to grow.