Explorez tous les épisodes de VUX World
| Date | Titre | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Feb 2018 | Welcome to VUX World with Kane Simms | 00:16:07 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to VUX World. This introductory episode is all about what VUX World is all about. Here, I'll take you through:
The aims of VUX WorldThis is an ambitious show that intends to cover three core aims for three primary groups of people:
How we'll meet our aimsWe'll reach those aims through focusing on three core pillars of content.
The host of VUX WorldYour host for this journey is me, Kane Simms. I have a history in sound design and music production as well as extensive experience in marketing, UX and agile project management. My love for all things audio and passion for understanding user behaviour and technology culminate perfectly right here in the world of voice. So, strap in, hold tight and brace yourself for the rapidly expanding world of voice. I'm glad to be your guide. Now, without further ado, you should totally check out the first proper episode of the podcast: User testing on voice-first devices with Sam Howard. Enjoy :) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 12 Feb 2018 | Voice-first user testing with Sam Howard | 00:53:06 | |
In this episode, we're talking about voice first user testing, why it's so imperative and how you can get started doing your own voice user testing. Why voice first user testing?Although usability testing graphical user interfaces is as common as a trending tweet, it's a seed that’s yet to be greatly sewn in the world of voice. There are many services that will provide technical testing, but those specifically offering voice first user testing in person with real users are few and far between. Enter, Userfy. Whether you create Alexa Skills, Google Actions or any other voice user experience, this episode will help you make sure that your voice user interface (VUI) works for the people that use it through teaching you how to approach a voice-based user testing project. We’ll cover things like:
Introducing Sam HowardOur guest is Sam Howard, co-founder and Director of user research agency, Userfy, which specialises in user testing. Sam has a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and a degree in Psychology. That, mixed with a love of technology and a passion for helping people, puts Sam at the forefront of the user research field. Links:Sam's 'Usability challenges facing voice-first devices' article Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 12 Feb 2018 | How to build an Alexa Skill in Wordpress with Tom Harrigan | 00:42:55 | |
In this episode, we’re going to show you how you can build an Alexa Skill from right within Wordpress. Wordpress powers almost a third of the internet and now millions of websites running Wordpress can all have a presence on voice. It’s all thanks to VoiceWP, the Wordpress plugin that lets you build an Alexa Skill from within the most widely adopted CMS on the planet. You can create Flash Briefings with ease and even have Alexa read the content of your website. We all know about audio books, but this could be the first opportunity to have your website content turned into audio form and read aloud as soon as its published, without you having to go through much effort at all. It’s super simple to set up. Our GuestVoiceWP was built by our guest, Tom Harrigan, Partner and VP of Strategic Technology at Alley Interactive, a full service digital agency that specialises in helping publishers succeed online. We speak to Tom about VoiceWP, which is allowing brands such as People.com and Dow Jones’ Moneyish.com build Alexa Skills and establish a presence on voice with ease. And you can use it too, because it’s free and super-simple to set up. So, if you use Wordpress as your CMS and you’re interested in testing the waters in voice, or if you’re looking for a starting point Alexa Skill building, then this episode is for you. We’re speaking to Tom about:
Links
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| 19 Feb 2018 | All about conversational AI with Jeff Smith | 01:06:55 | |
Conversational AI crops up constantly in conversations about voice, but what actually is it? How the heck does it work? And how can you use it? We speak to Jeff Smith to find out. In this episode, we cover:
At the foot of the show, I said that this was: “One of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had in my life.” And I wasn’t lying. Getting to grips with Conversational AIIf you’re not familiar with the concepts of conversational AI, this episode will give you a great introduction. If you are familiar and work in the industry, Jeff drops some great nuggets and learnings from his extensive experience. And if you’re interested in this from a branding perspective, by the end of this episode, you’ll have a full understanding of the contexts and environments where it’s useful. Our GuestJeff Smith, author of Reactive Machine Learning Systems, has bags of experience in the area of machine learning and conversational AI. He’s built a series of AIs, including Amy and Andrew at X.ai (what a cool domain!). That’s an AI Personal Assistant that helps people schedule meetings. Jeff now works with IPsoft and manages the conversational AI team who’re building Amelia. Amelia, as you’ll find out in the show, is an extremely sophisticated AI that can perform many human tasks, increasing productivity and business efficiencies. Links
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| 26 Feb 2018 | Cross-platform voice development with Jan König | 00:57:27 | |
Find out all about the Jovo framework that lets you create Alexa Skills and Google Assistant apps at the same time, using the same code! You know how you always need to write platform-specific code for everything? One lot of code for your iOS app, another load for Android and more for Windows (if you even bother). Well, the same challenges exist today when creating voice apps. Well, those challenges did exist, until Jovo came along. With the Jovo framework, you can create an Alexa Skill and a Google Assistant app all from the same lot of code. It's part of Jovo's bigger mission to enable you to create multi-modal experiences with ease and to join together the sporadic tech outlets to create a unified experience across all devices and platforms. Our GuestJan König is one of the co-founders of Jovo and we're speaking to him today about all things cross-platform voice development. We'll hear from Jan about things like:
Links
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| 05 Mar 2018 | How to create an Alexa Skill without coding with Vasili Shynkarenka | 01:06:07 | |
But first, let's welcome co-host; Dustin CoatesWe're joined in this episode by our new co-host, Dustin Coates. Dustin is the author of Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant and has been involved in the voice scene since day 1. With extensive experience in software engineering, deep knowledge of Alexa and Google Assistant development and an immense passion for voice, Dustin brings a new perspective and different angles of questioning that, not only technical folk, but non-tech people will appreciate as well. One of the challenges with new technology platforms is that you typically need to be able to speak the lingo to develop on them. As the internet has progressed, there are what seems like a million dev languages that you'd need to be able to code in to be able to create your website or app. It wasn’t until relatively recently that tools cropped up to allow designers and total beginners to build on the web. Tools like Wordpress, Weebly and Squarespace have made it easy for anyone to create a presence online. The great thing about having that history of the web is that we can learn from the past and apply the things that work well to new industries and technology. That’s exactly what Vasili has done through the creation of Storyline. It's the Weebly of voice. It has a drag and drop interface and a user friendly workflow that will allow anyone to create an Alexa Skill without needing to code a single line. It will let more technical folk do further work if they’d like to, such as using an API integration to interrogate data, but for the less technical folk out there, what you get ‘out the box’ is more than enough to build a well-rounded Skill. In fact, testament to how much flexibility is baked into the tool is the recent announcement of the Amazon Alexa Skills Challenge: Kids winner, Kids Court, was created in Storyline. In this episode, we get into detail about:
Our guestVasili Shynkarenka is the founder and CEO of Storyline. After creating and selling an agency that specialised in creating conversational experiences for brands, Vasili turned his attention to focus on Storyline. Vasili is madly passionate about voice and has immense experience in the field. He’s super-keen for all kinds of people to get involved in creating voice experiences, no matter what their skill level. His vision for the future of smart speakers and his knowledge of creating voice experiences are inspirational. This episode is packed with insights and tips and tricks to help people of all skill levels create an Alexa Skill. Links
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| 12 Mar 2018 | All about Mycroft with Joshua Montgomery, Steve Penrod and Derick Schweppe | 01:20:00 | |
This week, we’re joined by the Mycroft AI team, and we’re getting deep into designing and developing on the open source alternative to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. If you’ve tried creating voice apps on platforms such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, then you’ll do doubt be familiar with their current limitations. Push notifications, monetisation and all-round flexibility generally leave plenty to be desired. What if there was an alternative? A platform that really did let you create whatever you wanted. Something that'll let you monetise. Something completely open to being used in a way that you want to use it. Well, that’s what the team at Mycroft AI have built. What is Mycroft AI?Mycroft AI is the world’s first open source voice assistant that runs anywhere. On desktop, mobile, smart speakers. In cars, fridges, and washing machines. You name it. You can put it where you like and do with it what you like as well. One member of the Mycroft community has hooked the platform up to a webcam and created a facial recognition feature that uses a persons face instead of a wake word. When you look at the camera, the speaker wakes and is ready for you to speak to it! As well as being open source and flexible, if you create something exceptional, then it could even become the default skill for that feature on the platform. That’s like you creating a really great weather skill on Alexa and Amazon using that as the default way to tell people the weather! Plus, your personal data is kept totally private. And Mycroft aren’t just creating cool software, they have a range of smart speakers as well. The Mark I speaker is on sale now and the Mark II is on Indiegogo right now. Our GuestsToday, we’re joined by Joshua Montgomery, CEO; Steve Penrod, CTO; and Derick Schweppe, CDO to talk all things Mycroft AI. We’re also joined again by co-host, Dustin Coates, and we’re getting into detail about:
Links
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| 19 Mar 2018 | Hearing voices: a strategic view of the voice space with Matt Hartman | 00:48:28 | |
This week, Dustin and I are joined by Matt Hartman, partner at Betaworks, curator of the Hearing Voices newsletter and creator of the Wiffy Alexa Skill. In this episode, we’re discussing:
Our Guest, Matt HartmanMatt Hartman has been with Betaworks for the past 4 years and handles the investment side of the company. Matt spends his days with his ear to the ground, meeting company founders and entrepreneurs, searching for the next big investment opportunities. Paying attention to trends in user behaviour and searching for the next new wave of technology that will change the way people communicate has led Matt and Betaworks to focus on the voice space. Matt has developed immense knowledge and passion for voice and is a true visionary. He totally gets the current state of play in the voice space and is a true design thinker. He has an entirely different and unique perspective on the voice scene: the voice ecosystem, voice strategy, user behaviour trends, challenges and the future of the industry. Matt curates the Hearing Voices newsletter to share his reading with the rest of the voice space and created the Wiffy Alexa Skill, which lets you ask Alexa for the Wifi password. It’s one of the few Skills that receives the fabled Alexa Developer Reward. BetaworksBetaworks is a startup platform that builds products like bit.ly, Chartbeat and GIPHY. It invests in companies like Tumblr, Kickstarter and Medium and has recently turned its attention to audio and voice platforms such as Anchor, Breaker and Gimlet. As part of voice camp in 2017, Betaworks invested in a host of voice-first companies including Jovo, who featured on episode 5 of the VUX World podcast, as well as Spoken Layer, Shine and John Done, which conversational AI guru, Jeff Smith (episode 4), was involved in. Links
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| 26 Mar 2018 | Voice first user research with Konstantin Samoylov and Adam Banks | 01:18:12 | |
We’re talking to ex-Googlers, Konstantin Samoylov and Adam Banks, about their findings from conducting research on voice assistants at Google and their approach to building world-leading UX labs. This episode is a whirlwind of insights, practical advice and engaging anecdotes that cover the width and breadth of user research and user behaviour in the voice first and voice assistant space. It’s littered with examples of user behaviour found when researching voice at Google and peppered with guidance on how to create world-class user research spaces. Some of the things we discuss include:
Plus, for those of you watching on YouTube, we have a tour of the UX Lab in a Box! Our GuestsKonstantin Samoylov and Adam Banks are world-leading user researchers and research lab creators, and founders of user research consultancy firm, UX Study. The duo left Google in 2016 after pioneering studies in virtual assistants and voice, as well as designing and creating over 50 user research labs across the globe, and managing the entirety of Google’s global user research spaces. While working as researchers and lab builders at Google, and showing companies their research spaces, plenty of companies used to ask Konstantin and Adam whether they can recommend a company to build them a similar lab. Upon realising that company doesn’t exist, they set about creating it! UX Study designs and builds research and design spaces for companies, provides research consultancy services and training, as well as hires and sells its signature product, UX Lab in a Box. UX Lab in a BoxThe Lab in a Box, http://ux-study.com/products/lab-in-a-box/ is an audio and video recording, mixing and broadcasting unit designed specifically to help user researchers conduct reliable, consistent and speedy studies. It converts any space into a user research lab in minutes and helps researchers focus on the most important aspect of their role - research! It was born after the duo, in true researcher style, conducted user research on user researchers and found that 30% of a researchers time is spent fiddling with cables, setting up studies, editing video and generally faffing around doing things that aren’t research! Konstantin SamoylovKonstantin Samoylov is an award-winning user researcher. He has nearly 20 years’ experience in the field and has conducted over 1000 user research studies. He was part of the team that pioneered voice at Google and was the first researcher to focus on voice dialogues and actions. By the time he left, just 2 years ago, most of the studies into user behaviour on voice assistants at Google were conducted by him. Adam BanksIt’s likely that Adam Banks has more experience in creating user research spaces than anyone else on the planet. He designed, built and managed all of Google’s user research labs globally including the newly-opened ‘Userplex’ in San Francisco. He’s created over 50 research and design spaces across the globe for Google, and also has vast experience in conducting user research himself. LinksVisit the UX Study website Follow UX Study on Twitter Check out the UX Lab in a Box Follow Kostantin on Twitter Follow Adam on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 02 Apr 2018 | My first 30 days as a VUI designer with Ilana Shalowitz and Brian Bauman | 01:00:56 | |
Today, we’re getting into detail about what it’s like to be a full-time VUI designer. We’re discussing the details of the role, the day to day duties and the skillsets that are important to succeed in designing voice user interfaces. The role of a VUI designer has been around for a while, but it’s not so common. However, with the rise of voice as an access point for controlling technology, this is one of the roles of the future. If you’re planning for that future and are considering seeking work in the voice first space; or if you’re a voice first design hobbyist looking to take it full-time; or if you’re generally interested in what it takes to create conversational interfaces, then this is a great episode for you. We’re joined by two professional VUI designers, Ilana Shalowitz and Brian Bauman of Emmi, and together they’ll be taking us through the ins and outs of the role that designs voice user interfaces for Emmi’s care calls. In this episodeIlana takes us through an overview of the VUI designer role and discusses what skillsets are important. She takes us through the interview process, bedding in, and drops some detailed knowledge voice user interface design based on her years of experience in the field. Brian then takes us through the role in more detail and looks at the specifics of the role, where a VUI designer fits into a project, what the day to day activities and duties are, and what he found during his first 30 days. We also discuss things like:
Our guestsIlana Shalowitz is the VUI Design Manager at Emmi and has a background in marketing and design. Ilana is forming a great reputation in the voice first space and is quickly becoming a leading voice for voice in the healthcare sector. She featured at the Alexa Conference 2018, spoke at the AI Summit 2018, has featured on the VoiceFirst.FM Voice of Healthcare podcast (Episode 5) and is a keynotes speaker at the Voice of Healthcare Summit in August in Boston. Brian Bauman is a former playwright and joined Emmi recently, taking on his first role as a VUI designer. Brian has a background in the creative arts and is a former playwright. He fills us in on what his first month as a VUI designer was like and how his creative background gave him some valuable transferable skills. About EmmiEmmi solutions is part of the Wolters Kluwer stable and helps care organisations extend the reach of their care through using technology. Ilana and Brian both wore on the automated voice-based outbound calls side of the company. They create call scripts and dialogue flows that are turned into real calls that patients receive and can interact with in conversation. This means that healthcare providers can speak to thousands of patients without needing make make any manual calls at all. Links
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| 09 Apr 2018 | Tackling the challenges of discoverability and monetisation on Amazon Alexa with Jo Jaquinta | 01:19:09 | |
Today, we're getting deep into the biggest challenges facing designers and developers on the Alexa platform: being discovered and making money. And who better to take us through it, than one of the most experienced developers on the voice scene, Jo 'the Oracle' Jaquinta. Speak to anyone who's serious about voice first development and they'll tell you the two biggest challenges facing the voice first world right now are skill discoverability and monetisation. Vasili Shynkarenka of Storyline mentioned it and so did Matt Hartman of Betaworks when they featured on the VUX World podcast previously. However, we rarely hear stories from people who've tried everything they can to overcome these challenges. Until now. In this episode, we're joined by Dustin Coates as co-host and we're speaking to Jo about his vast experience of designing and developing on the Amazon Alexa platform and how he's approached tackling those two big challenges. We also discuss voice UX design techniques that Jo's picked up along the way, as well as the tools and techniques he uses for developing skills. This one is jam-packed with epic insights from someone who few know more than in this space right now, and includes discussion on a vast array of subjects including: Discoverability:
Monetisation:
Design:
Development:
Other gems include:
Our GuestJo Jaquinta is a software developer with over 20 years' experience. Jo started building skills on the Alexa platform a short time after it was released, has created a host of interesting skills and learned plenty along the way through pulling Alexa in all kinds of different directions. His knowledge, experience and plenty of lessons learned were all applied in building Jo's most recent skill, the madly complex, 6 Swords. Jo shares plenty of his voice design and development knowledge on his YouTube channel, which is full of engaging and interesting insights, and has put pen to paper to share his knowledge in the shape of two books on Alexa: How to Program Amazon Echo and Developing Amazon Alexa Games. He's also active on the Alexa Slack channel, helping people solve their development problems and consulting on voice design and development. What Jo doesn't know about developing on Alexa isn't worth knowing. His immense knowledge and vast experience in this area are pretty much unrivalled, which is why I refer to him as 'the Oracle'. Links
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| 16 Apr 2018 | How people REALLY use Amazon Alexa with Martin Porcheron | 01:10:37 | |
Today, we’re discussing the findings of Martin Porcheron’s study, ‘Voice interfaces in everyday life’. We uncover insights into how people actually use Amazon Alexa in the home. We find unique user behaviour, new technology challenges and understand what it all means for voice UX designers, developers and brands. Voice interfaces in everyday lifeImagine if you could eaves drop into someone's house and listen to how they interact with their Amazon Echo. Imagine, whenever someone said “Alexa”, you were there. Imagine being able to hear everything thing that was said for an entire minute before the word “Alexa” was uttered, and then stick around for a whole 60 seconds after the interaction with Alexa was over. Well, that’s exactly what today’s guest and his associates did, and his findings offer some unique lessons for VUX designers, developers and brands that’ll help you create more natural voice user experiences that work. In this episode, we’re discussing:
Key takeaways for designers and developers
Our GuestMartin Porcheron is a Research Associate in the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham and has a PhD in Ubiquitous Computing, a sub-set of Computer Science. Martin has conducted several studies in the field of human-computer interaction, including looking at how people make use of mobile phones in conversations i.e. how people use something like Siri mid-conversation and how those interactions unfold. Martin’s angle isn’t to look at these things as critical or problematic, but to approach them as an opportunity to learn about how people make use of technology currently. He believe this enables us to make more informed design decisions. The study we discuss today has won many plaudits including Best Paper Award at the CHI 2018 conference. Links
Where you can listen:
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| 23 Apr 2018 | Turning Alexa for Business into a business with Bob Stolzberg | 00:51:13 | |
Today, we’re following the story of the inspirational Bob Stolzberg of VoiceXP, and giving you some deep insights into how you can turn Alexa for Business into a business. In this episode, Dustin and I are getting into the detail of how VoiceXP came to be, how Bob almost made $14,500 profit from his first Alexa Skill, why voice is such a big opportunity and how he turned Alexa for Business into a business. We’re also discussing the features that come with Amazon Alexa for Business and some example use cases taken from Bob’s experience, as well as plenty of other areas such as:
Our GuestAfter spending 20 years working in the enterprise IT field, Bob Stolzberg founded VoiceXP, the voice first company that helps businesses create efficiencies and increase productivity through voice. Bob and his team work with enterprise clients and SMEs to implement Alexa for Business within organisations. From designing and building specific skills for clients, to the full implementation of the devices and platform. Bob’s experience of the enterprise IT environment gives him a unique understanding of the corporate IT world, the kind of people that make purchasing decisions and the kind of risks or concerns IT professionals will perceive with new technology platforms such as this. He’s managed to overcome those concerns, mitigate those risks and build a thriving business that’s just joined one of the top startup accelerators in the US, Capital Innovators. Bob’s an immensely engaging and passionate guy, and offers some amazing guidance and pointers for anyone looking to turn voice into a business. This is a truly inspirational listen. Links
Where to listen
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| 30 Apr 2018 | All about voice first games with Florian Hollandt | 00:57:26 | |
Voice first games are one of the most popular Amazon Alexa skill categories. So what type of voice games are available? And how do you create them? We speak to game developer and reviewer, Florian Hollandt, to find out. Games are helping Alexa take off. According to Voicebot.ai, Alexa Skill games are the second most popular skill categorybehind smart home skills. Amazon has been encouraging the development of games, too. We've seen the Alexa Skills Challenge: Kids recently and I'd say it’s more than likely that most of the developer rewards will have gone to game developers, given the engaging nature of games. We’ve touched upon voice first games on the podcast previously, such as our chat with Jo Jaquinta of Tsa Tsa Tzu, but we haven’t yet covered audio game development in detail, which is what we’ll do today. Creating voice first gamesIn this episode, we’ll be getting into detail about the different kids of voice first games that are out there, as well as looking at some of the techniques you can use to create engaging games such as interactive stories. We’ll cover things like:
Our GuestFlorian Hollandt is the Product Manager at Jovo, the cross platform voice app platform, and is also an Alexa game developer and reviewer. He’s created some popular games on Alexa, such as the German card game, Mau Mau, and has written a ton of voice first game reviews on Medium. Florian is madly passionate about voice first games and his knowledge on the subject is impressive. He guides us through his experience and shares some delightful tips on how you can start creating voice first games yourself. Links
Some of the things Florian spoke about:
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| 07 May 2018 | All about Voysis and the GUI to VUI transition with Brian Colcord | 00:52:25 | |
We’ve covered plenty of voice first designand developmenton this podcast. Well, that’s what the podcast is, so we’re bound to! Most of what we’ve discussed has largely been voice assistant or smart speaker-focused. We haven’t covered a huge amount of voice first application in the browser and on mobile, until now. Mic checkYou’ll have noticed the little mic symbol popping up on a number of websites lately. It’s in the Google search bar, it’s on websites such as EchoSim and Spotify are trialing it too. When you press that mic symbol, it enables your mic on whatever device you’re using and lets you speak your search term. Next time you see that mic, you could be looking at the entry point to Voysis. On a lot of websites, that search may well just use the website’s standard search tool to perform the search. With Voysis, its engine will perform the search for you using its voice tech stack. That means that you can perform more elaborate searches that most search engines would struggle with. For example: “Show me Nike Air Max trainers, size 8, in black, under $150” Most search engines would freak out at this, but not Voysis. That’s what it does. Of course, it’s more than an ecommerce search tool, as we’ll find out during this episode. In this episodeWe discuss how approaches to new technology seem to wrongly follow a reincarnation route. Turning print into web by using the same principles that govern print. Turning online into mobile by using the same principles that govern the web. Then taking the practices and principles of GUI and transferring that to VUI. We touch on why moving you app to voice is the wrong approach. We also discuss:
Our GuestBrian Colcord, VP of Design at Voysis, is a world-leading designer, cool, calm and collected speaker and passionate sneaker head. After designing the early versions of the JoinMe brand markings and UI, he was recruited by LogMeIn and went on to be one of the first designers to work on the Apple Watch prior to its release. Brian has made the transition from GUI to VUI design and shares with us his passion for voice, how he made the transition, what he learned and how you can do it too. About VoysisVoysis is a Dublin-based voice technology company that believes voice interactions can be as natural as human ones and are working intently to give brands the capability to have natural language interactions with customers. LinksFollow Voysis on Twitter Follow Brian on Twitter Listen to the AI in industry podcast with Voysis CEO, Peter Cahill Read Brian's post, You're already a voice designer, you just don't know it yet Where to listen
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| 14 May 2018 | All about voice search with the SEO Oracle, Dr. Pete | 01:02:13 | |
Dr. Pete, Marketing Scientist at Moz, and world-leading SEO oracle, tells all about the voice search landscape, and how you can rank for searches on digital assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. This is a jam-packed episode with deep, deep insights, advice and guidance on all things voice search related. We'll give you practical ways to compete to be the answer that’s read out in voice first searches, as well as some notions on the current and potential future benefit that could bring. Voice searchThere are all kinds of stats around voice search, which we’ve touched upon before.
With more people using their voice to search, how will that affect search marketers, content creators and brands? What’s the difference between a voice search and a typed search? Is there anything you can do to appear in voice search results? We speak to one of the search industry's top sources of SEO knowledge, Dr. Pete, to find out. Getting deep into voice searchIn this episode, we’re discussing the differences between voice search on mobile, voice first search on smart speakers and typed search. We discuss the absence of search engine results pages (SERPs) in a voice first environment and increased competition for the singularity: the top spot in voice search. We chat about the search landscape, the effect voice is having on search, changing user behaviour and expectations, new search use cases and multi modal implications, challenges and opportunities. We get into detail about how voice search works on devices such as Google Assistant and Google Home. This includes debating Google’s knowledge graph and it’s advantages and disadvantages in a voice first context. We look at the practicalities of serving search results via voice. This touches on the different types of search results, such as featured snippets, and how voice handles different data formats such as tables. We get into detail about the different types of featured snippets available and how each translate to work (or not work) on voice. We discuss Dr. Pete’s work and studies in the voice first space including his piece ‘What I learned from 1,000 voice searches' and what he found. We wrap up with some practical tips that you can use right now to start preparing for the influx of voice searches that’ll be hitting the air waves soon and help you start to rank in a voice first environment. Our Guest
Dr. Pete Myers (a.k.a Dr. Pete a.k.a. the Oracle) is the Marketing Scientist at Moz, the SEO giant and search industry leader. Dr. Pete has been an influential search marketer since 2012 and has spent years studying Google’s search algorithm, advising clients and the SEO industry on best practice and guiding the industry into the future. His research and writing on the topic has been helping brands keep on top of the search space, improve their rankings and business performance and has helped keep Moz at the top of the industry. Mozhas been at the top of the SEO chain since 2004 and is trusted by the whole SEO industry as the place to go for SEO tooling, insights and practical guidance. Links
Where to listen
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| 21 May 2018 | All about BotTalk and how to run a voice first discovery workshop with Andrey Esaulov | 01:04:46 | |
This week, we’re digging into how you can create an Alexa Skill using BotTalk and we give you a template for running a voice first discovery workshop, with SmartHaus Technologies CEO and BotTalk co-founder, Andrey Esaulov. We discuss the importance of starting with a solid use case and how imperative it is to base your voice app on a real-world scenario that’ll add value to your users. What turns an average voice experience into an EPIC voice experience? Send us your answers and you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefing this week! We then dive deep into the practical detail of how to approach designing a voice first user experience with BotTalk and find out more about the language it’s built in: YAML. We discuss what BotTalk is, how it’s different from some of the other tools on the market, how it works, it’s features and how you can get up and running. Finally, Andrey takes us through a voice first discovery workshop template that he uses with clients in order to take a brand from zero to hero: from ideation to prototype, and how you can do the same too. We also traverse some other interesting conversational landscapes such as the concept of skill-first companies: brands that pop up as skills which are the core of the business, like an app is for Instagram. We chat about Artificial Intelligence and how intelligent it actually is in the voice first space. We touch on managing client expectations, monetisation and how voice is making waves in Germany. About BotTalkThe current selection skill building tools on the market are at opposite ends of the technical spectrum. Some tools require you to know how to code from the ground-up, like Jovo and be a skilled back-end developer. Others have a drag and drop interface and don’t require any coding at all, like Storyline. BotTalk bridges the gap between those two worlds with a tool that’s aimed at UX designers who have some basic coding knowledge, like HTML and CSS. It provides some of the technical capability you’d expect if you built something from scratch, whilst providing a more simple coding language: YAML. Think of it as HTML for voice. Our Guest
Andrey has a computer science background, with expensive experience in the start up world and mobile growth space, as well as a PhD in Linguistics and Literacy. Andrey’s skillset is a perfect match for this industry and his knowledge in this area is vast. Couple his computer science and linguistics knowledge with his skills in working with clients and delivering growth and you’ve got a perfect recipe for success. LinksFollow Andrey on Twitter Join the BotTalk Facebook community Follow BotTalk on Insta Watch the BotTalk tutorials on YouTube Visit the Smarthaus Technologies website Join the Alexa Slack channel Enable the VUX World Flash Briefing Feature on this week's Flash Briefing Where to listen
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| 28 May 2018 | All about Pindrop, VUI design and VUI tuning with Simonie Wilson | 00:57:35 | |
This week, we take a look at the similarities between VUI design for IVR and VUI design for voice assistants. We also explain what VUI tuning is and why it’s important, whilst giving you some tips on how you can tune your voice user interface. We also discuss PinDrop and voice first security. In this episodeWe speak to one of the world’s expert VUI practitioners, Simonie Wilson, to get under the hood of Passport and figure out what it is, how it works, why it’s needed and how you can use it to authenticate users with confidence whilst preventing fraud. We also tap into Simonie’s vast VUI design experience and discuss how she goes about designing VUIs that delight rather than smite customers. We get into detail about the benefits of VUI tuning and Simonie shares her advice on how you can continuously improve a VUI experience. Are brands failing on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant? Send us your answers and you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefing this week! Privacy and securityPrivacy is often cited as a barrier and a challenge in the voice first space. How do you authenticate a user, build trust and enable people to transact in a frictionless way, all without a long, drawn out, failure stricken on-boarding process? PinDrop is changing that with it’s product, Passport: a fool-proof way to recognise whether someone is who they say they are simply by the sound of their voice. It works in all voice first areas and can even tell whether the voice is synthetic. Here's an example of it working with Alexa: There is so much potential in the voice first space from a vcommerce, health and financial management perspective that technology such as this could smooth over the cracks in the verification process and enable people to transact more seamlessly in a voice first world. Our Guest
Simonie is madly passionate about VUI design and, in this episode, shares all of that passion and some real lessons and insights from her experience that’ll help all VUI designers improve what they do. Where to listen
LinksVisit the PinDrop website Connect with Simonie on LinkedIn Email Simonie Read about PinDrop Passport in Forbes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 04 Jun 2018 | Voice analytics and Dashbot with Arte Merritt | 00:49:08 | |
This week, we’re getting deep into voice analytics and will help you learn more about how you can understand the performance of your voice first experience. One of the biggest benefits that technology has given us is the ability to understand. To understand whether our latest PPC campaign had an impact on sales. To understand whether our new website increased our leads. To understand whether our pricing tweak made a difference on click through rates. To understand whether our foray into Facebook is sending more traffic. To understand whether our customers are satisfied. Tools such as Google Analytics have been providing this kind of value to website owners for years. Tracking where your users come from (Google, Facebook etc), what they do when they arrive and whether they convert are the cornerstones of understanding website performance. What about voice analytics?With the introduction of new mediums such as conversational chatbots and voice first applications on platforms such as Alexa and GoogleAssistant, how do you understand the performance of these things? How do you know if your Alexa Skill or Google Action is successful? Send us your answersand you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefingthis week! Can you apply the same rules as the web? Can you even access the same data? Is there some new metrics that matter more? And how can you use all of this to understand and improve the performance and use of your product? Well, that’s what you’re about to find out. In this episodeWe’re speaking to Dashbot.ioCEO Arte Merritt all about the conversational analytics platform and how you can understand whether your conversational experience is working for your users. We discuss the kind of metrics Dashbot provide including:
Arte tells us some case studies of how the tool has been used to understand and then improve conversational experiences. We discuss some of the challenges with conversational analytics and how they relate to the voice first space and we hear about where voice analytics are heading in the future. Our guestArte Merritt has worked in mobile and analytics for 20 years. He built an analytics platform which he sold it to Nokia before turning his attention to fill a gap in the market when he realised that Slack didn’t have any analytics. Dashbot was born and its been serving conversational designers ever since, helping them understand and improve their chatbots and voice applications. Since its creation, Dashbot has analysed 32 billion messages and counting! Where to listen
Links
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| 11 Jun 2018 | All about Alpha Voice with Bryan Colligan | 00:59:29 | |
This week, we’re finding out how content creators can have their podcasts and YouTube content indexed and searchable on voice, with Bryan Colligan of Alpha Voice. With the podcast industry thriving and more people listening to podcasts than ever, more brands are starting to launch their own podcasts. Podcasts are a perfect fit for devices like the Echo and Google Home because they provide ambient entertainment, similar to the widely popular relaxation sounds skills. Two problems face podcast and content creators: how do you make your podcast discoverable in the first place and how do you allow people to search through your backlog of episodes in order to find something that interests them? Podcast discoverability is almost as much of a problem as Alexa Skill discoverability. Although Google is beginning to do its bitto help podcasts be discovered online, what about on voice? This is the problem Alpha Voice aims to solve. Help others get their skill passed first time by sharing your skill certification stories: Send us your tipsand you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefingthis week! What is Alpha Voice?Alpha Voiceindexes your podcast or YouTube content and makes it all searchable on Alexa via your own Alexa Skill. And it’s not just the podcast titles and guests you can search for. You can search for anything at all that interests you and the platform will search within your content to find your search term, then recommend that episode for you to listen to. In this episodeWe’re talking to Alpha Voice co-founder, Bryan Colligan, about how the platform works, how he and his co-founder built it and what value it gives content creators. We also get into detail about how the VUX of search works on voice: processing and serving potentially hundreds of search results. How do you determine which ones to display to the user? We also discuss:
We wrap up by telling you all about the VUX World Alexa Skill, built using Alpha Voice! (U.S. only right now but will be available in EU soon.) Our guestBryan Colligan is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Alpha Voice. Bryan is based in Silicon Valley, has founded a series of startups and has been helping startups create mobile apps and improve their SEO for the last 10 years. After reading the Mary Meeker internet trends report and learning that Google can understand 96% of what humans say, Bryan has turned his attention to the voice-first world. After a number of failed experiments, he stumbled across the idea for Alpha Voice and is now helping content creators have their content found on Alexa. Where to listen
Links
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| 18 Jun 2018 | All about Speakeasy AI with the Fresh Prince of AI, Frank Schneider | 01:00:27 | |
This week, me and Dustin are speaking with the Fresh Prince of AI, Frank Schneider, about how Speakeasy AI aims to deliver the promise of AI in voice (that’s a lot of AI’s). How many people truly understand what their customers are asking for? Whether it’s in your Alexa Skill, your chatbot or in your IVR, you can’t hope to serve the needs of your users or customers if you don’t understand what they’re trying to do or ask. Understanding is the most important first step you can takeOnce you truly understand the current situation, you can realise whether you’re meeting your existing customer needs, and how well you’re doing that. Through gathering understanding, you can also work out where you’re failing and where the opportunities for improvement or expansion are. That then helps you improve and plan for the future. Speakeasy AI is helping businesses understand what their customers are trying to accomplish on a wide variety of conversational platforms by extracting the intent from any conversation. Its patent-pending technology, called Speech-to-Intent, doesn’t use the typical speech-to-text engine that most voice-first platforms use. Instead, it analyses the actual audio in real time through funnelling it through a pipeline of different ‘top secret’ micro services. This means that low audio quality and accents have no effect on its ability to understand customer intent. Plus, it also allows for further understanding of context. In this episodeDustin Coates and I hear from Frank Schneider, CEO, Speakeasy AI, about the current state of play in the AI field and touch on the amount of bullshit that exists right now. We discuss how conversational understanding works and why speech-to-text might not be the most optimum way to capture intent. We delve into the ins and outs of Speakeasy AI and get the low-down on its patent-pending Speech-to-Intent technology and hear how it could be a better way of understanding customer intents, regardless of audio quality or accents. Frank tells us all about how Speakeasy AI can help businesses improve any conversational platform. He shares the opportunities that exist in the IVR space and how much untapped potential there is for businesses who’re willing to listen. We've discussed VUI design for IVR with Simonie Wilsonrecently, and it would seem that you could use Speakeasy AI as part of a discovery piece of work to figure out where to start, then use Simonie's techniques to begin making improvements. We also chat about the challenges of the AI industry and how working together could bring progress. Our guestFrank was born and raised in Philly and, after spending 9 years in education, including teaching at a school for high school kids who committed felonies, he transitioned into technology sales and marketing, where he’s spent the last 13 years. He’s consulted and led teams providing solutions in various SaaS and AI solutions for contact centers and B2B. He was the first sales executive at Creative Virtual USA and helped grow the team from 12 to 40 employees. After a successful exit, his former CEO is now funding his new venture, Speakeasy AI. Where to listen
LinksVisit the Speakeasy AI website Follow Speakeasy AI on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Jun 2018 | Helping brands bridge the gap with Witlingo's Brielle Nickoloff and Luciana Morais | 00:59:20 | |
This week, we're finding out how brands can get started and enter the voice first world of smart speakers and digital assistants. Me and Dustin Coates are joined by one of the top US voice first agencies, Witlingo. We speak with two Lead VUX designers, Luciana Morias and Brielle Nickoloff, about how your brand can bridge the gap over to voice. In this episodeBrielle and Luciana share how they guide brands through the process of discovering their voice and establishing a voice first presence. We discuss the new challenge of working out what your brand sounds like and how to determine whether to focus on voice first content or voice as a service. They discuss how brands should be playing the long game and the challenge of convincing clients to start small and adopt a continuous improvement culture to grow their voice first capability. We chat about figuring out whether your should repurpose existing content or create new and discuss some of the great guides to voice design that Witlingo produce, including the guide to making your Facebook content voice friendly. Our guestsLuciana Morais has a background in UX research and analysis and has a wealth of design experience. Now working at Witlingo as UX Lead and VUI Designer. Brielle Nickoloff has a background in linguistics and has published a study on The use of profane threats and insults in the Anthropomorphization of digital voice assistants. Brielle is also Lead Voice User Experience Research and Design at Witlingo. Where to listen
LinksVisit the Witlingo website Follow Witlingo on Twitter Read Witlingo's VUI assessment guidelines Read Witlingo's Facebook guidelines Follow Brielle on Twitter Follow Luciana on Twitter Check out the Ubiquitous Voice Society Read Brielle's paper: The use of profane threats and insults in the Anthropomorphization of digital voice assistants It's about the interface stupid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 02 Jul 2018 | How I built the world's best chatbot with Steve Worswick | 01:06:51 | |
We speak to the creator of the world’s best chatbot about how to design Loabner prize-winning conversational experiences. Steve Worswick is the creator of Mitsuku, the general conversation chatbot that has won the Loabner prizefor the last two year’s straight. 13 years in the making, Mitsuku passed the Turing testand convinced a panel of judges that it’s human over the course of a 20 minute conversation, two years in a row, to be crowned the world’s best chatbot and conversational agent. It's featured in the Wall Street Journal, BBC, The Guardianand Wired. And, unlike most chatbots that focus on serving a specific set of use cases, Mitsuku is a general conversational agent. That means you can speak to it about anything. This week's Flash Briefing question is from Brielle Nickoloff of Witlingo: What would an open source voice assistant look like? Send us your thoughtsand you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefingthis week! What about voice?Although Mitsuku is a text-based chatbot, this episode looks at how to take Steve’s 13 years of experience in creating conversational experiences and apply that to the voice first space. In this episodeThis episode is all about how to design and create a world-leading general conversational experience. We get into detail about how Mitsuku is built (hint: it doesn’t use natural language processing or machine learning like most other conversational AI) and how Natural Language Processing-based conversational agents don’t quite hit the mark. Steve tells us about Mitsuku’s rule-based supervised learning and how that’s leading to better experiences. Despite Mitsuku passing the Turing test, Steve tells us why the Turing test is redundant. We discuss user behaviour and how people treat a general conversational agent, from counselling to romance, bullying to marriage and money worries, and how to be sensitive on those topics. We hear how varied responses can increase engagement. So much so that one person has spent 9 hours talking to Mitsuku! We find out how to deal with pronoun resolution and how to refer back to what was said earlier in the conversation. We uncover how brands are using Mitsuku as part of their conversational experiences, handing off to her when a user strays away from the use cases that their bot can handle. We chat about how Alexa fairs against Mitsuku and hear where Siri would have finished if it was entered in to the Loabner prize competition. Perhaps one of the most valuable lessons in this episode is the importance of persisting. Creating a conversational agent, a true conversational experience, takes time. It’s not a quick fix that you cobble together with a quick Alexa Skill. It takes years of development, iteration and constant improvement. But, if you stick with it, you might end up with the next best conversational agent. Our guestSteve Worswick started out in IT support and built Mitsuku as a passion project on the side. 13 years of hard work and 3 Loabner prizes later, he’s now working at the world’s largest chatbot agency and provider, PandoraBots. Where to listen
LinksContact Pandorabots Check out Mitsuku on Pandorabots Check out Steve's talk at the Chatbots and Voice Assistants Londonevent Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 09 Jul 2018 | How to translate your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action with Maaike Dufour | 01:02:19 | |
Translating your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action is about more than translating the words in your script. It's about translating the user experience. Maaike Dufour calls this 'transcreating' and she joins us this week to show us how it's done. Why should you translate your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action?The world is getting smaller. Technology has enabled us to reach and connect with people from every corner of the earth with ease. Take this podcast for example. It’s listened to in over 40 different countries, most of which don’t speak English as a first language. In fact, the vast majority of the world don’t speak English and certainly not as a first language. Amazon Alexa is globalAmazon Alexa is localised for 11 countries at the time of writing. 5 of them don’t speak English as a first language (France, Germany, Austria, Japan, India). For global brands, having your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action available in every country you do business is a no-brainer. But even for hobbyists and smaller scale developers, think about the population of those countries and the potential impact you could have if you Skill was to do well in those locales. In this episodeWe’re being guided through the importance of making your Alexa Skill or Google Action available in other languages and what steps you should take to make that happen. We discuss why simply translating your Alexa Skill script won’t work and why you need to recreate the user experience in your desired language. We cover some of the cultural differences between countries and give some examples of why that makes literal translations difficult. For example, the X-Factor in the UK is a nationally recognised TV show. Whereas, in France, it aired for one season and wasn’t well received. Therefore, referencing the X-Factor in a French Skill is pointless. Maaike tells us about how, when transcreating your Alexa Skill, you might even need to change your entire persona due to the differences in how other cultures perceive different personas. For example, in the UK, a postman is simply someone who delivers mail. Whereas, in France, the postman is a close family friend who stops to chat and knows everybody in the street personally. In the UK, the postman is a distant stranger. In France, the postman is a close acquaintance. That makes for two entirely different personas. We discuss examples of words and phrases that exist in one language but don’t in another and how that can both open up opportunities and sometimes present challenges. Our guest
We’re joined by Maaike Dufour, Freelance Conversation UX Designer, co-founder of UX My Botand supreme transcreator of voice first applications. Maaike, quite rightly, prefers to use the term ‘transcreate’ instead of ‘translate’ because simply translating the words that make up your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action won’t work, as you’ll find out in this episode. Maaike has worked on voice first UX for a number of years. Having worked with the Smartly.aiteam, Maaike now works with Labworks.ioand is helping the team break into international markets through the transcreation of popular Alexa Skills such as Would You Ratherinto other languages. Where to listen
LinksRead Maaike's thoughts on Medium Watch Maaike's talk at Chatbots and Voice Assistants London on YouTube Follow Maaike on Twitter Check out Maaike's website Visit UX My Bot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Jul 2018 | All about conversation design with PullString's Oren Jacob | 01:06:33 | |
This week, we speak to conversation design master, Oren Jacob, about what it takes to create successful conversations with technology. There are so many complexities in human conversation. When creating an Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action, most designers try to mimic human conversation. Google itself has taken steps in this direction with the fabricated ‘mm hmm’ moments with Google Duplex. But does all of this have an actual impact on the user experience? Does it make it better or worse? How natural is natural enough and does it matter? What other factors contribute to conversation design that works? PullString CEO and co-founder, Oren Jacob answers all in this week's episode. In this episode on conversation designWe get deep into conversation design this week and discuss things like:
Our guest
Oren Jacob, co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Oren has worked in the space in between creativity and technology for two decades. After spending 20 years working at Pixar on some of the company's classic films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, Oren created ToyTalk. ToyTalk was a company that allowed kids to interact with their toys through voice. As voice technology progressed and voice assistants and smart speakers were shaping up to take the world by storm, ToyTalk morphed into PullString, the enterprise-grade conversation design platform. About PullstringFor over half a decade, PullString's platform, software, and tools have been used to build some of the biggest and best computer conversation in market, with use cases and verticals as diverse as hospitality to home improvement and Hello Barbie to Destiny 2. It was also used to create, the latest in big-ticket skills, HBO 's Westworld: The Maze. Where to listen
LinksVisit the PullString webiste Follow PullString on Twitter Read more about how the Westworld skill was created Check out the details of the talk Oren will be giving at the VOICE Summit 18 Check out the details of Daniel Sinto's demo of PullString Conversehappening at the VOICE Summit 18 Check out the VOICE Summit website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 23 Jul 2018 | The strategy, creativity and technology triangulation with RAIN's Will Hall and Jason Herndon | 01:18:05 | |
This week, we’re speaking to RAIN agency’s Will Hall and Jason Herndon about how their three pillars of: strategy, creativity and technology, are leading the world's biggest brands to voice first success. In this episode: voice strategy, creative prowess and technological geniusIn this episode, RAIN’s Executive Creative Director, Will Hall, and VP, Engineering, Jason Herndon guide us through the practicalities of how they shape voice strategies and implement voice first solutions for the world's biggest brands. Whether you're a brand, a designer or developer, this episode will help you understand how and where to start. It’ll give you things to consider and help you align voice first initiatives with core business drivers. It’ll show you what you can expect from working with (or at) a voice first agency and give you some examples of how industry-leading brands are approaching voice. It’ll also present some of the challenges you’ll face and maybe even challenge your own thinking on whether your organisation is set-up for success, including showing you why 'systems thinking' is so important. You'll understand how to hone-in on use cases that provide value. You’ll learn how to structure a voice first project; the skills and resources you’ll need and who needs to be involved, as well as the process of going from nothing to implementing a world-leading voice experience. It’ll show you tools that you can use for design and development, as well as guide you on the value of testing early. It’ll also give you some ideas on how far ahead you should plan your roadmap and cover why a crawl, walk, run approach is most appropriate. As ever, we go deep into all of the above and more - this episode is a longer one than usual, and it’s densely packed with nothing but insights. Our guestsWill Hall is the Executive Creative Director at RAIN. Will has worked on countless projects for global brands and blends the strategy and creative sides of projects together, making sure that the strategic aims of clients are brought to fruition with the appropriate creative. Jason Herndon, VP, Engineering at RAIN, has worked with the world's largest brands on technical architecture and development and, at RAIN, is responsible for turning big ideas into reality. About RAINRAIN has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands on some of the most headline grabbing Alexa Skills. Campbells Kitchen and Tide were two of the first branded Alexa Skills and are still cited today as pioneering examples of how valuable voice can be for brands. The Warner Brothers’ Dunkirk interactive story, which we discussed in our episode on voice games with Florian Hollandt, pushed the boundaries on what’s possible on the Alexa platform and brought movie-like sound design and scripting to the voice first world. RAIN help brands big and small figure out the strategic value in bringing voice to your business and guide brands through the creation, implementation, promotion and development of voice first experiences. Where to listen
Links
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| 30 Jul 2018 | #VOICE18 with Tim Kahle and Dominik Meißner of 169 Labs | 01:09:27 | |
We celebrate the 6 month anniversary of VUX World by reviewing the modev Voice Summit event that took place last week in Newark. We anchor on the Voice Summit to take stock of 2018 and look forward to what brands, designers and developers should be focusing on over the next 6 months. To guide us through #VOICE18, Dustin and I are joined by Tim Kahle and Dominik Meißner, founders of 169 Labs. Win 2 free tickets to the All About Voice conference in Munich on 12th October169 Labs are running a voice first conference of their own on 12th October in Munich: All About Voice. For a chance to win 2 free tickets to the event, just send a tweet using #AllAboutVoice and answer the question: why is 2018 all about voice? 169 Labs will pick a random winner who'll receive 2 free tickets to the conference. Use the code VUXWORLD to save 10%. LinksCheck out the Voice Summit website Visit the All About Voice website See the 169 Labs and Amazon Twitch broadcast See Tim Kahle's slides from his talk Read Dustin Coates' write up on day 1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 06 Aug 2018 | All about conversational commerce with Charlie Cadbury | 00:50:34 | |
In this episode, we take a deep dive into conversational commerce: what it is, what's possible and how you can turn conversing strangers into paying customers. Our guestCharles Cadbury is the co-founder of Say It Now, a company that helps brands respond the the growing consumer need for immediacy. Charlie's history is impressive. He's seen more than 1,000 client briefs and delivered over 300 digital projects, many of them related to commerce. After working with Lola Tech to create the Dazzle platform, Charlie's attention remains focused on conversational interactions and helping brands convert conversations into commerce. Where to listen
LinksCheck out the Say It Now website Follow Charles on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 08 Aug 2018 | Adoption, growth, in-skill purchases and developer rewards with Nick Schwab | 00:38:20 | |
The first in a new series called 'Unscripted' where we have off-the-cuff, unscripted conversations with voice first leaders and practitioners to get acquainted, hear their story and find out how they do what they do. In this first episode, we speak to Alexa Skill developing veteran, Nick Schwab, founder of Invoked Apps, about:
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| 20 Aug 2018 | Voice first design strategy with Ben Sauer | 01:00:27 | |
Ben Sauer is a Design Strategist who's worked with some of the world's well known brands: Virgin, Tesco, Pearsons, British Gas, Penguin Random House, BBC. Ben worked with Clearleft as a Design Strategist for many years and more recently turned his attention to how voice will change design. Over the last couple of years, Ben has been focusing on helping brands navigate the voice space and figure out how voice will impact their business, as well as where to start with a voice strategy. Ben joins Dustin and I today to discuss the ins and outs of voice first design strategy, including finding a use case and the differences between voice design strategy and design strategy in general. Where to listen
LinksFollow Ben Sauer on Twitter Visit voiceprinciples.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 27 Aug 2018 | All about Voiceitt with Sara Smolley | 00:52:33 | |
Alexa Accelerator 2018 featured startup, Voiceitt, gives people with speech impairments their voice back. Today, we're joined by co-founder and VP Strategy, Sara Smolley, to hear all about it. The There are millions of people across the globe who have non-standard speech. People who've had a stroke or who have multiple sclerosis or cerebral pausey, for example. Voiceitt's advanced speech recognition system, which is deployed through an app, allows those people to speak and be understood. Once it's configured, all you do is speak through the app and Voiceitt will do the rest, handling speech to text and displaying the text on-screen whilst a synthetic voice speaks the words to you. For all that's said about voice being accessible, Voiceitt's mission is to open up voice technology to the rest of the world. Our GuestAfter working in Hong Kong and South Korea in marketing and startup consulting, Sara moved to Tel Aviv to help build and establish Voiceitt. Sara travels across the globe working on the strategic side of the business, building relationships, gathering insights and bringing the powerful mission and technology that Voiceitt posses to the world. Where to listenLinks
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| 31 Aug 2018 | The Rundown 001: Alexa settings API, 5 Google Assistant tips and more | 00:44:43 | |
We're starting a new feature on VUX World: The Run Down. Dustin Coates and I are getting together each week (or bi-weekly) to discuss the recent happenings in the voice space and how that'll impact designers, developers and brands. Alexa settings APIWe're starting off by discussing the Amazon Alexa feature that developers have been clambering for since 2016: the settings API. With the settings API, you can access the user's timezone (among other things) and use that within your skill to personalise the voice experience for your users. You can send them targeted push notificationsat the appropriate time and use their preferred weather measurement (Celsius or Fahrenheit). We discuss Eric Olsen's (3PO Labs) in-depth review of the settings APIand how it could be the beginning of something bigger. Scott Huffman's 5 insights on voice techWe also discuss Scott Huffman's post (VP Engineering, Google Assistant) on the five insights on voice technologyand how they should impact your approach. For example, focusing on utilities and understanding what kind of things people use Assistant for at different times of day. Voysis and Voicebot vCommerce studyWe delve into the Voysis and Voicebot study on vCommerceand discuss how voice on mobile is so important, yet how it's bubbling away under the surface, not grabbing many headlines. Alexa skills challenge, Storyline and icon creationFinally, we discuss the latest Alexa Skills Challenge: Games, in-skill purchases on Storyline (check out VUX World with Vasili Shynkarenka, CEO, Storyline) and the new Alexa feature that allows anyone to create icons for their skills. Where to listenOther linksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 03 Sep 2018 | Netflix 13 Reasons Why does voice + video with Tony Lizza | 00:38:42 | |
Tony Lizza, Project Manager at Apollo Matrix, shares his battle scars from working on the technical implementation of the Netflix 13 Reasons Why interactive cinema experience. This was a voice and video experience that was deployed through the mobile web browser and was used to promote Netflix's biggest show, 13 Reasons Why. Dustin Coates and I talk to Tony all about the creation of the experience and the technical challenges Tony and his team faced in implementing something so bleeding-edge, including taking advantage of new APIs that allow developers to access a user's mic and video from within a web browser on mobile and how to handle a lack of that functionality within the walled gardens of social media. We discuss using a fallback touch-based experience, the surprising results of user testing, as well as the technical details of how to do speech to text from within a browser and plenty more. Here's a promo video for the experience that gives you a flavour: 13 Reasons Why - Talk to the Reasons - Netflixfrom Moth + Flameon Vimeo. Where to listenLinksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 17 Sep 2018 | All about voice testing with Bespoken's John Kelvie | 01:11:44 | |
This week, Dustin and I catch up with John Kelvie, CEO and founder of Bespoken, and learn all about the three types of testing that can help you create and sustain great voice experiences. We discuss:
We also discuss the convergence of usability testing and technical testing and how they can play together, as well as hear John's take on the future of voice. Where to listenLinksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 24 Sep 2018 | All about Snips with Yann Lachelle | 01:00:35 | |
This week, we're speaking to serial entrepreneur, Yann Lachelle, COO at Snips, about the privacy by design alternative to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Privacy is a hot topic. With the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the introduction of GDPR in Europe, people are becoming more aware and more concerned with how companies are using their data. On the enterprise-side, one of the challenges preventing companies from implementing voice is the apprehension towards sending sensitive data to Amazon or Google. Enter, SnipsThe Paris-based startup is bringing a privacy-first approach to their voice assistant. We speak to Snips' COO Yann Lachelle about the details and how you can use it In this episodes, we discuss:
Our guestYann Lachelle is a serial entrepreneur. He's founded and sold several companies and has a 100% record of founding and exiting. Yann's experience in the startup world is vast and his knowledge on AI and the voice industry is more than impressive. As COO of Snips, Yann is helping Snips make technology disappear by bringing to market the world's first privacy-by-design voice assistant. Yann brings us some inspiring stories, intensely relevant insights and plenty of observations that'll help you get a full understanding of what Snips can offer you or your clients. Where to listenLinksJoin the Snips community on Discord Check out Snips' whitepaper explaining the details of their blockchain ambitions Find out more about Snips and blockchain
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| 25 Sep 2018 | The Rundown 002: Big news from Alexa as Google Home Mini becomes top selling smart speaker... and more | 00:41:10 | |
It's been a busy few weeks with both of the top two voice assistant platforms announcing new devices and software improvements, but what does it all mean for brands, designers and developers? Google Home Mini becomes top selling smart speakerThat's right, the Google Home Mini smart speaker outsold all other smart speakers in Q2. Google's intense advertising over the summer months looks like it could be starting to pay off. It still isn't the market leader. Amazon still holds that spot, for now. Takeaway:At the beginning of this year, Google Assistant was a nice-to-have feature in your voice strategy. Google's progress over the summer and the recent sales of the Google Home Mini now mean that obtaining a presence on Google Assistant is unavoidable for brands looking to make serious play in this space. We discuss whether you should use a tool like Jovo for developing cross-platform voice experiencesor whether you should build natively. Dustin's pro tip:If you need access to new feature updates as and when they're released, you should build natively. If you're happy to wait, use something like Jovo. Google rumoured to be launching the Google Home HubIt's rumoured that Google will be releasing a smart display to rival the Amazon Echo Show. In the podcast, we said that this will go on sale in October. That's not the case. The actual sale date hasn't been announced yet. Takeaway:With more voice assistants bringing screens into the equation, designing and developing multi modal experiences is going to be an increasing area of opportunity over the next year. Google becomes multi-lingualGoogle announced multi-lingual support for Google Assistant. That means that you can speak to the Assistant in a different language and have it respond back to you in that language without having to change the language settings. This is a great feature for households that speak more than one language. Takeaway:Although this might not be widely used initially, this is a great step forward in providing a frictionless user experience for those who speak more than one language. For brands, this brings the necessity to internationalise your voice experiences closer to home. Check out the podcast we did with Maaike Dufour to learn more about how to transcreate and internationalise your voice experience. Amazon announces about a million Alexa devicesAmazon announced a whole host of Alexa enabled deviceslast week, including:
Takeaway:These new devices, whether they succeed or fail, present opportunities for brands, designers and developers in that they provide an insight into a user's context. That can help you shape an experience based around that context. For example, you can now target commuters with long form audio through Alexa while they're driving. You can provide micro engagement through Alexa while your customer is cooking their rice. This could be the beginnings of the 'Alexa Everywhere' movement, which will be laden with opportunities for those who seek to understand where users are and what they're seeking to achieve at that time. Alexa Presentation LanguageThe Alexa Presentation Languageallows you to design and develop custom visuals to enhance your user's screen-accompanying Alexa experience. Until now, if you wanted to serve visuals on an Echo Spot or Echo Show, you'd have to use one of 7 design templates. This announcement means that you can create your own designs and even do things like sync visual transitions with audio and, in future, there'll be support for video and HTML 5. Takeaway:As with many of the items in this week's Rundown, there's an increasing emphasis on multi-modal experiences. Over the next year or so, expect more voice + screen devices. This will mean that you'll need to start thinking about how you can add value through visuals as part of your offering. Kane's pro tip:Even though there are more options for voice + screen, still focus on creating voice-first experiences. Don't let the screen take over. Lead with voice and supplement or enhance with visuals. Alexa smart screen and TV device SDKThis announcementenables device manufacturers to create hardware with a screen that runs Alexa. For example, Amazon will announce the details of how Sony have used the SDK to add Alexa capability to their TVs. Takeaway:For hardware brands, you can now add Alexa to your products. For the rest of us, watch this space. This is yet further evidence to suggest that voice + screen experiences are going to be something users come to expect in future. Introducing the Alexa Connect Kit (ACK)ACK allows device manufacturers to add Alexa to their hardwarewithout having to worry about creating a skill or managing cloud services or security. Essentially, you can add an ACK module to your device, connect it to your micro controller and hey presto, you have an Alexa enabled device. It's the same thing Amazon used to build their new microwave. Takeaway:Another opportunity for hardware brands to add value to your product line and another signal that Alexa will potentially be spreading further and wider. If you haven't thought about how this might impact your business and the opportunities you might find in future, this is a good time to start that thought process. Two final Alexa announcements:Whisper mode, which enables a user to whisper at Alexa and it'll whisper back. Hunch, which is Alexa's first move to become proactive in suggesting things you might want to do based on previous behaviour. Takeaway:In unclear whether either of these things require developers to markup their skills for this in any way or whether Alexa will take care of everything for you. Finally, BixbyBixby will be opening up for public Beta in November after a few months in private beta. There was a webinar this week, exclusive to the private beta members, which included a host of announcements. I'm still trying to get hold of the webinar or someone who can shed some light on it and we'll try and bring you further news on this on the next Rundown. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 01 Oct 2018 | Voice first digital transformation with Shawn Kanungo | 01:01:06 | |
Voice first technology has the potential to transform organisations. Join Dustin and I as we dig into how voice is being used to create efficiencies within businesses with Silver founder, Shawn Kanungo. Silver, an agency based in Canada, is helping organisations use voice to streamline business processes, access line of business systems and improve productivity. We speak to the founder, ex-Deloitte digital transformation guru and speaker, Shawn Kanungo, to find out how it's done. In this episode, we discuss:
Where to listenLinksSilver on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 08 Oct 2018 | Voice first social networks with Daniel Gonzalez | 01:08:47 | |
This week, we take a deep dive into voice first social networks and messaging, as we explore whether these platforms are poised for success or doomed to fail. We also discuss some of the challenges in building a voice first product, including the limitations of the tech stack and how VUI design is a way of compensating for this. To take us through the world of voice first social, we're joined by Daniel Gonzalez, co-founder of voice first messaging platform, SoundBite. Where to listenIn this episode, we discuss:
LinksFollow Daniel on Twitter Email Daniel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 15 Oct 2018 | VUI design best practice from user testing with 120 brands, with Abhishek Suthan and Dylan Zwick | 00:56:26 | |
Pulse Labs founders, Abhishek Suthan and Dylan Zwick share their advice on VUI design best practice that they've learned from conducting voice first usability testing with over 120 brands. Where to listenThe search for VUI design best practiceIn web design, there are standards. Common design patterns and best practice that you'll find on most websites and apps. The burger menu, call to action buttons, a search bar at the top of the page. These have all been tried and tested and are par for the course on most websites. In voice, that best practice is still to be worked out. And today's guests have begun to uncover it. Pulse Labs is a voice first usability testing company. They conduct global remote user research by testing voice experiences for brands. Think of it almost like usertesting.com, but specifically for voice. After working with over 120 brands, the founders; Abhishek Suthan and Dylan Zwick, have stumbled upon some of the most common mistakes that designers and developers make in their Google Assistant Actions and Alexa Skills. Through design iterations and further testing, they've worked out what some of that best practice looks like. In this episodeOver the course of this episode, we hear from Abhishek and Dylan about some of the most common mistakes designers make when it comes to voice user experience design. We discuss how these issues can be fixed, as well as further best practice when designing for voice, including:
This episode is one to listen to again and again. No doubt the standards will change as and when the tech advances and usage grows, but for now, this is probably the best start there is in defining best practice in voice. LinksVisit the Pulse Labs website Email Dylan Zwick
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| 16 Oct 2018 | The Rundown 003: Increased engagement, Alexa room bookings, skill-to-skill connections, Google Assistant payments and more | 00:37:19 | |
Translating the recent happenings in voice news into insights and recommendations for designers, developers and brands. As ever, lots has been occurring recently. In this episode of the rundown, we discuss: The state of voice assistants by Adobe and how we're seeing increased usage in the 'third category'. That is, people are using more in-depth functionality on their voice assistants. That opens doors for richer voice experiences and suggests that customers can handle more complex, transactional interactions. The picture of voice shopping - thanks to Charlie Cadburyfor sharing - and how voice is being used, not just for making transactions, but throughout the purchase journey and after sales as well. This looks at voice commerce in a more broader setting and shows that there's opportunities for brands in and around the shopping experience, not just at the transactional end. Alexa for business room booking and whether the productivity gain will be worth climbing into bed with Amazon. Skill to skill connections and the potential for joining together voice experiences. Whether that'll take-off and whether there'll be opportunities for paid referrals within skills. AVS for Set-Top-Boxes which will allow set-top-box manufacturers to add Alexa to their devices. Another nod to a multi-modal future. Google Home hub launches without a camera and is yet another sign and the screen and voice will play a joint role in the home. Google rolls out payments for Assistant that lets brands and developers offer digital goods for sale on a one time or subscription basis. Monetisation is creeping upon us and with that comes opportunities for those who can find the right voice experience that's worth paying for. Google Sign-in for Assistant which lets customers sign in to third party actions via their Google account. This is the voice equivalent of the 'sign in with Google' or 'sign in with Facebook' that we see on websites and is a great friction-stripping step for voice. Facebook announce Portal and whether it'll ever catch on. If you have a news story you'd like us to cover in the next episode of the Rundown, or if you have a question you'd like Kane and Dustin to answer, hit us up on Twitter, Instagramor get in touch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 22 Oct 2018 | Learn the art of conversation design with Hans Van Dam | 01:00:00 | |
A deep dive into the three pillars of conversation design: psychology, technology and creative writing, with Robocopy's Hans Van Dam. Where to listenConversation designConversation design is more than simply putting some words on a page and hoping for the best. The assembly of words is only part of the job of a conversation designer. To design natural conversations that mimic what we're accustomed to having with our fellow homo sapiens, it takes an understanding of the three pillars: psychology, technology and writing. In this episodeThis week, we're joined by Hans Van Dam, founder of conversation design agency, Robocopy, and creator of top conversation design training program, conversationalacademy.com, to be taken through the details of what it takes to design great conversational experiences. Hans takes us through:
We also get into detail on things like the importance persona design, measuring success and a whole host more. LinksVisit the Robocopy website Check out the Conversational Academy Nudge by Case Sustein and Richard Thaler on Amazon Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing Fiction
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| 31 Oct 2018 | How to design a voice experience for the older generation with Heidi Culbertson | 00:58:08 | |
Where to listenVUI design for the elderly10,000 people turn 65 every day in the USA and the UK has an ageing population, too. In America, the over 65s control over 70% of the country's discretionary spending. The opportunities in providing value to the once-termed 'silver surfers' could be hugely profitable, and Heidi Culbertson has her finger right on the pulse. Over the last 2 years with Ask Marvee, Heidi has trained and tested voice experiences with literally thousands of older people. Today, Heidi joins us on the show to share with you what she's learned. In this episode, we discuss:
LinksVisit the Ask Marvee website Follow Ask Marvee on Twitter Follow Heidi on Twitter Email Heidi: heidi@askmarvee.com Watch Heidi's talk at the Voice Summit 2018 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 05 Nov 2018 | Scoring voice experiences with Joel Beckerman | 01:01:32 | |
This week, Dustin Coates and I discuss the importance of sound design in voice experiences with the founder of Man Made Music, Joel Beckerman. Where to listenSound design for voice experiencesMan Made Music were voted the third most innovative company in music, behind Apple and Spotify. Its founder; author and composer, Joel Beckerman, has scored experiences for the worlds most iconic brands, including AT&T, Disney, Nissan, Mercedes, Southwest Airlines and IMAX, to name a few. On this episode, Joel joins us to discuss:
LinksVisit the Man Made Music website Check out Joel's book: The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel and Buy Visit Joel's website Follow Man Made Music on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 12 Nov 2018 | The latest in voice SEO and discoverability with John Campbell | 01:11:07 | |
Discussing the latest insights and research in voice SEO and showing you how you can get discovered on Google Assistant, with the MD of Rabbit and Pork, John Campbell. Where to listenVoice SEOVoice SEO is a roaring-hot topic. All the top marketing and business publications have been writing about the importance of voice searchall year. But, little has been documented on how to actually do anything about it. Until now. John Campbell is the Head of SEO at Roast, London, and has more recently become the founder and MD of a new voice agency, Rabbit and Pork. John's experience in the SEO field is serving him ideally in breaking into the voice assistant space. Through using traditional SEO tools and techniques, John has been experimenting with ways in which brands can be found on voice assistants, and he joins us this week to share what he's learned recently. It'll blow your mind. In this episodeIn this episode, you'll learn some practical tips on what you can do to have your content found on Google Assistant. Using the latest research, data and insights, John takes us through some of the work he's been doing recently and shares the results he's been achieving. Amongst other things, we discuss: Implicit invocations
We discuss Roast's studies of 10,000 key phrases and discuss the trends in how Google Assistant serves results, including starting to rank actions in search results and serve them as a higher priority that featured snippets. The graph below, for example, shows how, prior to an action existing, Google Assistant wasn't serving a search result at all. Once the action was launched, Google Assistant started sending people to the action, rather than serving nothing.
We discuss how you can spot these opportunities and create an action where there isn't currently a Google Assistant search result. Explicit invocations
We also discuss the future of voice SEO and where it's all heading, including skill-to-skill connections and much, much more. LinksRabbit and Pork website (coming soon) Follow Rabbit and Pork on Twitter Follow John Campbell on Twitter Check out the latest Voice SEO report from Roast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 19 Nov 2018 | VUI design best practice for kids Alexa skills with the BBC's Paul Jackson | 01:10:44 | |
We're honoured to be joined by Paul Jackson, Senior Designer at the BBC, to discuss how the Beeb are approaching VUI design, with a particular focus on designing Alexa Skills for kids. Where to listenVUI design for kidsThe BBC is killing it in voice right now. It's one of the only companies with a full in-house voice and AI team and it consists of tens of people. It's investing heavily on what it believes is the future of content. This week, we're lucky enough to step inside the BBC and see how it's approaching voice design. We speak to Senior Designer on the Voice and AI team, Paul Jackson, about his experience in creating the CBeebies Alexa Skill and how you can apply the learnings to your voice user experiences, regardless of whether you're creating for kids or not. We discuss:
The whole episode is littered with clips from the CBeebies Alexa Skill as we move through the conversation and highlight examples of design thinking and how it translates to the end-result. This one is not to be missed. LinksFollow the BBC UXD team on Twitterand Instagram Follow Paul on Twitter and Instagram Enable the CBeebies skill Head to Mobile UX London Enquire about the Designing for Voice Course(mention VUX World to save 10%) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Nov 2018 | Samsung Bixby: Your questions answered with Bob Stalzberg and Roger Kibbe | 00:49:39 | |
Samsung has opened up Bixby to developers, so we've rounded up two Samsung Bixby Developer Experts, Bob Stalzberg and Roger Kibbe, to get to the heart of what this means for the voice community. Where to listenLinksFollow Bob on Twitter Follow VoiceXP on Twitter Visit the VoiceXP website Follow Roger on Twitter Follow VoiceCraft on Twitter Visit the VoiceCraft website Check out the Samsung Bixby Developer Portal
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| 23 Nov 2018 | Meet Uma, the enterprise voice assistant, with Stephen Milner and Marcus Finley | 01:03:50 | |
Today, we're joined by Ammi Systems CEO, Stephen Milner, and CTO, Marcus Finlay, to discuss voice in the enterprise and how their new voice assistant, Uma, is set to revolutionise productivity at work. Where to listenVoice in the enterpriseThis episode advanced on some of the concepts we discussed with Shawn Kanungoand discusses working examples of how Uma is helping people be more productive at work. After 2 years in the making, Uma will be officially launched at MAD//Feston November 28th in London. The team at Ammi are offering some free tickets to VUX World listeners, so if you'd like to come and see the launch of Uma, see what she's all about and witness MAD//Fest, then just reach out to us on Twitter. LinksVisit the Ammi Systems website Follow Ammi on Twitter Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Dec 2018 | All about vCommerce and Jetson.ai with Jon Chu | 00:54:10 | |
This week, we're speaking with Jon Chu, COO, Jetson AI, all about the Jetson platform and voice shopping and ordering in the restaurant, retail and hospitality space. Where to listenLinksVisit the Jetson.ai website Follow Jetson on Instagramand Twitter Connect with Jon on LinkedIn Email jon@jetson.ai Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 11 Dec 2018 | The Rundown 004: re:Invent recap | 00:48:41 | |
On this week's Rundown, we're catching up to run through AWS re:Invent, Amazon's biggest event of the year, and discuss everything voice-related that occurred. We'll also weave in some of the latest news happenings and analyse the implications and opportunities for the industry. Where to listenLinksDustin's recap write ups of days one, two, threeand four Freebox, the French set-top box with Alexa Alexa extends audio sample length from 90 seconds to 240 seconds 27 Amazon Polly voices made available News anchor text-to-speech voice Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 17 Dec 2018 | Emotional intelligence with Sina Kahen | 01:09:15 | |
This week, we're joined by VAICE co-founder, Sina Kahen to discuss the importance of emotional intelligence and how you can design EQ into your voice experiences using the 6 'First date' principles. Where to listenOur guestSina Kahen is an Imperial College MBA student working in the biotechnology and voice technology industries. He is currently co-founder and product manager at VAICE, a pro-bono consulting group that helps brands discover the benefits of voice and conversational AI, from strategy to experience. His recent work involves identifying the challenges presented after the recent wave of voice technology, and aiming to solve them with his understanding of behavioural science, biomimicry, and philosophy. LinksConvenience-First: Bursting the Voice-First Bubble Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 24 Dec 2018 | Dialogue design and 2018 review with Rebecca Evanhoe | 00:53:27 | |
Merry Christmas VUX World fans, today we're diving deep into dialogue design and discussing some of the nuances and details you need to think about to craft compelling and frictionless dialogue in your voice experiences, with Rebecca Evanhoe. We're also taking a look back through 2018 and discussing our favourite events, skills, actions and devices, as well as looking forward to what's in store for 2019. Where to listenLinksConnect with Rebecca on LinkedIn Buy Erika Hall's book on Conversation Design Music credit: Have Yourself a Merry Funky Christmas by DKSTR Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 Jan 2019 | All about voice UX research with Chris Geison | 01:03:23 | |
For the first episode of 2019, Dustin and I chat to long time fan of the show, hardcore Wu-Tang fan and resident UX research expert at AnswerLab, Chris Geison, about the ins and outs of UX research for voice. As Principle UX Researcher at AnswerLab, Chris and his colleagues work with Fortune 100 companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, specialising in helping them learn how people use technology so that they can design the right product for the right use case. Chris joins us today to share some of the research that AnswerLab have conducted on user behaviour and voice, as well as talk us through the different types of UX research he uses, what each type is good for and how you can conduct user research for voice yourself. This episode builds on concepts we've discussed previously with Ben Sauer (voice first product strategy), Konstantin Samoylov and Adam Banks (voice first user research), and Sam Howard (voice first user testing). Where to listenLinksConnect with Chris on LinkedIn The state of smart speakers (research by AnswerLab) Just enough research by Erika Hall Interviewing users by Steve Portigal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 23 Jan 2019 | All about voice content management and localisation with Milkana Brace and Jonathan Burstein | 00:49:07 | |
Today, we're discussing why you should separate voice app content from your code and logic with Jargon founders, Milkana Brace (CEO) and Jonathan Burstein (CTO). Where to listenJargonSeparating content from code is a practice that not only makes it easier to manage your VUX in general, but also paves the way for internationalising your Alexa Skill or Google Assisntant Action for other countries. Jargon's SDK does the former (separating code from content) and their transcreation services do the latter (internationalise your skill or action for other languages. Internationalising Alexa Skills and Google Assistant Actions: the land grabThis January, Google announced that Google Assistant will be available on over 1 billion devices. Amazon report to have now sold over 100 million Echo devices. Yet, 90% of all smart speaker activity is conducted in English. That's despite Alexa having a decent presence across Europe, Asia and South America, and Google Assistant being available globally. Jargon's theory: not enough people are internationalising their Alexa Skills or Google Assistant Actions. And, because there isn't as many Skills and Actions in other languages, the prizes available for those who do transcreate their VUX are there for the taking. In this episode, we take a deep dive into both and explain the benefits of managing content independently from code, as well as discuss the land grab available right now if you internationalise your Skill or Action. Oh, and how to do it! LinksVisit jargon.com Follow @jargonjourney on Twitter Check out @jargonjourney on Instagram Download the Jargon SDK: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@jargon/alexa-skill-sdk https://www.npmjs.com/package/@jargon/jovo-plugin https://www.npmjs.com/package/@jargon/actions-on-google Check out the Dabble Labs videos on YouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 28 Jan 2019 | Designing story-telling robots with Amy Stapleton | 00:56:43 | |
This week, Dustin and I are joined by Tellables co-founder, Amy Stapleton, to discuss storytelling through Alexa and the design challenges that come with that. By the end of this podcast, you'll:
About Amy and TellablesAfter spending many years in IT, including 14 years at NASA as an IT manager, Amy Stapleton is driving the voice first revolution forward. Tellables build conversational story experiences for talking devices and provide a platform to showcase the work of talented authors within voice apps. Where to listenLinksView the My Box of Chocolates list of candies Paul Cutsinger on situational design Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 01 Feb 2019 | VUX Voiceboard | A voice design workshop blueprint | 00:18:40 | |
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_M0yaIYo3Ag Here's a full blueprint for a voice design workshop. It shows you, from beginning to end, the process to go through to design world class Alexa skills. If you're an agency trying to help brands build Alexa skills or voice apps, you can use this template to go through the VUX design process. If you're a brand, you can use this to do the same with your teams. Or if you're a hobbyist, you can use this to ideate and prototype in order to get to a valid use case. For the full transcript: https://vux.world/voice-design-worksh... Podcasts referenced in this video: VUI design best practice from testing voice apps with over 120 brands, with PulseLabs: https://vux.world/voice-product-strat... Voice strategy with Ben Sauer: https://vux.world/voice-product-strat... Tools mentioned in this video: BotMock: https://botmock.com/vuxworld/ (for a free trial) VoiceApps: http://voiceapps.com Xtensio: https://xtensio.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 05 Feb 2019 | Voice first brand strategy with James Poulter | 00:49:08 | |
This week, we're chatting to the ex-Lego frontier-seeking, Vixen Labs-venturing, Voice2 fire-starting, voice-first-feasting James Poulter about how brands can, could and should approach voice. As the ex-Head of Emerging Platforms at Lego Group, James led Lego through their first foray into voice with the creation and launch of the Lego Duplo experience on Alexa. He also founded the Voice2 What's App community group with Will Harvey, which is now one of the most active online voice communities. (It's where we spend a good chunk of our time.) James is currently CEO at Vixen Labs, a company he co-founded with CCO, Jen Heape, that offers consultancy services to global brands, helping them navigate the unchartered waters of voice. Where to listenLinksFind out more about the Voice Summit 2019 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 12 Feb 2019 | How we made Hidden Cities Berlin with Nicky Birch, Michelle Feuerlicht and Nigel James Brown | 00:59:23 | |
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the creation of the world's first voice-first interactive documentary: Hidden Cities Berlin for Google Assistant. The action is part of a collaboration between Google and the Financial Times and was created by Rosina Sound and Reduced Listening. We're joined by the people behind the action, founder of Ronsina sound, Nicky Birch; interactive and immersive producer and BAFTA-winner, Michelle Feuerlicht; and audio software engineer, programmer, two-time BAFTA winner and all-round audio veteran, Nigel James Brown. Together, the dream team take us through the creation process of Hidden Cities Berlin. We discuss the brief, the ideation and creation process, the design considerations and the technical build. In this podcast, you'll learn about:
Where to listenLinksVisit the Rosina Sound website Contact Nicky: nicky@rosina.io Say 'Hey Google, speak to Hidden Cities Berlin'
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| 12 Feb 2019 | Thank you | 00:08:53 | |
As we celebrate 1 year of VUX World, we wanted to say thank you, each and every one of you, for listening week in week out and for being a part of this journey. Here's to the next 100! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 18 Feb 2019 | Anything world with Gordon Midwood | 00:48:53 | |
This week, we're getting deep into using voice to enhance the gaming experience, with Anything World founder, Gordon Midwood. Where to listenLinksWebsite: https://anything.world/ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/anything.world.worldwide Twitter: https://twitter.com/_AnythingWorld FB: https://www.facebook.com/Anything.World.Worldwide/ iOS app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speak-to-anything/id1395178504 Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.differentcloth.speaktoanything Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 04 Mar 2019 | Smart speakers increase in-store sales with Bree Glaeser and Brooke Hawkins | 00:44:14 | |
Diving deep into the usage of smart speakers in-store, finding out how a voice assistant is helping with product selection and driving sales, with The Mars Agency's Bree Glaeser and Brooke Hawkins. If you've had your ear to the ground, you might have come across this example of how voice is being used to help people shop for whisky in-store. It's called SmartAisle. It's an interactive voice assistant that takes away the paradox of choice by guiding users through a conversation to find the right whiskey for them. It's a sterling example of how voice could and should be applied in-store and is proving to increase sasles. Today, we're speaking to the team that designed it to find out about:
Earn monthly recurring revenue from your skills/actionsIf you build skills/actions for clients, then you can earn money from them each month through Speebly. Speebly let's your client's skill/action be accessed and interacted with via your client's website. Sign up your client to Speebly and you'll get a share of the monthly subscription fee. Plus, if you've already built the skill/action, it'll take you 5 minutes to set up. Where to listenAbout Bree GlaeserBree is an innovation strategist, currently focused on helping brands prepare for a voice-first world. Bree leads the voice practice at The Mars Agency, and is a core member of the team responsible for dreaming up and bringing to life the first-of-its-kind voice assistant at brick and mortar retail, SmartAisle (SM). Bree got into the voice and conversational commerce space via a background in design thinking and innovation. She has acted as a coach/industry expert supporting the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Program and other innovation groups in the Bay Area, to help students and professionals identify insights and ideate consumer/user-driven solutions. About Brooke HawkinsBrooke started her career in voice designing interactive phone calls and voice assistants for healthcare. Since then, she’s helped co-write the Intro to VUI course at CareerFoundry, designed chatbots for Fortune 500 clients at Nuance, and now works with The Mars Agency designing voice shopping experiences for brands. When she’s not designing for brands, Brooke writes about the burgeoning field of voice ethics, and is always thinking about the new ways voice interfaces are changing our lives for better or worse. About The Mars AgencyThe Mars Agency is a global marketing practice, specializing in marketing to shoppers, consumers and retailers across the ever-expanding omnicommerce environment. Mars uniquely refers to this environment as the A-to-V Commerce space, which incorporates everything from Autonomous to Voice commerce. Mars, proud of its independence and growth-for-clients focus, operates internationally across the Americas, Europe and Asia through its network of 13 offices. LinksVisit The Mars Agency website Connect with Brooke on LinkedIn Read more about Smart Aisle from the Marketing Dive Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 11 Mar 2019 | Inside Voice with Kane Simms and James Poulter | 00:30:16 | |
An interview with Kane Simms taken from the Inside Voice podcast, the official podcast of the Voice Summit 2019. Visit voicesummit.ai to apply to speak or buy tickets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 14 Mar 2019 | TechNOVA Voice 2019: Voice 101 opening talk | 00:31:03 | |
This is the recording of the opening breakfast session at TechNOVA Voice 2019, a voice-first conference held at the Hilton Tower Bridge, London, on 14th March 2019. Kane covers where we're at in voice right now, from adoption numbers and usage figures, to emerging environments and a run through of some exemplar use cases. View the slides and source material: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NqmndiWCF4EEke76lCFQaTKr9jyepkp0Qv_F1bV59rc/edit?usp=sharing Find out more about the conference: https://marketforcelive.com/technova/events/voice/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 18 Mar 2019 | Creating world-class interactive audio with Jonathan Myers and Dave Grossman | 01:04:39 | |
We're joined by Jonathan Myers and Dave Grossman, founders of world-class interactive audio production company, Earplay. Jonathan and Dave take us through what it takes to create movie quality interactive stories and share with us their approach to creating some of the worlds best voice experiences, such as Jurassic World Revealed and Jack Ryan. We're also joined by our special co-host for this episode, Florian Hollandt. In this episode, we discuss:
Where to listenLinksEarplay: https://www.earplay.com Codename Cygnus: http://www.codenamecygnus.com Earplay iOS: http://bit.ly/Earplay Creator inquiries: talent@earplay.com Bose AR: https://bose.com/ar Xandra: https://www.xandra.com Capstone: https://www.capstonepub.com Jack Ryan: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Video-JACK-RYAN/dp/B07GX72SN2 Jurassic World: https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Studios-Interactive-Jurassic-Revealed/dp/B07D8KLPC9 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 26 Mar 2019 | Talk to me with James Vlahos | 00:49:55 | |
This week, Dustin and I are joined by journalist and author, James Vlahos, to discuss the details of his book Talk to Me: How voice computing will transform the way we live, work and think. Where to listenAbout Talk to MeJames Vlahos writes for the likes of WIRED, New York Times Magazine, Popular Science and GQ. His new book Talk to Mechronicles how the world’s biggest tech companies are battling to dominate voice—Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and the Assistant—the biggest technological paradigm shift since mobile phones. The book tracks the strange scientific quest—from humanoid talking contraptions of the 19th century to the latest AIs—that has resulted in our being able to say something to a voice assistant and receive an intelligible reply. And it explores voice computing’s potential to upend control of knowledge; to befriend, advise, and surveil; and to preserve memories of lost loved ones, as with James' Dadbotproject. “Voice computing will profoundly reshape the way humans relate to machines, and Talk to Me is a brilliant and essential guide to what’s coming. James Vlahos understands how the technology works and all the complex things it will bring into the world—and he’s a superb writer too. You’ll find insights and meaning on every page, and you’ll keep turning them. This book is dynamite.” — Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief, Wired “Conversational AI is a genuine paradigm shift in our experience with technology. Vlahos brings the whole story to life, from big-picture historical context to the impact on our intimate personal lives. A thoughtful and enjoyable read.” — Tom Gruber, cocreator of Siri “James Vlahos has written an excellent book on how voice computing has become more and more of a growing presence in our everyday world. In Talk to Me, he provides the promise and peril of this development.” — Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author, and futurist “The baton of disruption has been passed from the smartphone to voice, and Vlahos helps make sense of this tectonic shift.” — Scott Galloway, author of the bestseller The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google LinksCheck out the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Passage. Follow James Vlahos on Twitter
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| 02 Apr 2019 | Building an assistant on an assistant with Nick Carey | 00:58:47 | |
This week, Dustin Coates and Kane Simms are joined by Nick Carey, Lead Product Designer at Potato, to discuss the concept of creating an assistant on an assistant. This episode touches on some unique topics that we haven't covered before, such as:
We also discuss Nick's design and research process, how voice changes the interaction pattern, how character and story improve engagement and how technical development mixed with design led the team to create a randomised response builder capable of generating over a million different response combinations. LinksVisit the Potato website: http://p.ota.to(what a cool domain!) Twitter: NSDCarey
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| 09 Apr 2019 | Amazon Alexa skill localisation with Tech Evangelists Andrea Muttoni and German Viscuso | 01:10:37 | |
We're honoured to be joined by Andrea Muttoni and German Viscuso, Technical Evangelists at Amazon Alexa, to dive deep into how to translate your Alexa skill into other languages. At the time of writing, Amazon Alexa is available in over 40 countries and 12 languages, and continuously growing. For skill builders, tapping into emerging markets is key to having your skills used on a global scale and to growing your user base. However, if you have a skill that's in English, you can't just point it to the Italian or German skill store. You have to localise it and translate it for those languages. In this episodeIn this episode, German Viscuso and Andrea Muttoni walk us through a step by step process of how to localise your Alexa skill. We cover:
Andrea and German point to the importance of separating content and responses from code logic as the key to a successful localisation project. To help you visualise what that means, I've put together a little graphic that should help you picture this process visually.
This episode builds on the conversations we had about VUI design localisation with Maaike Dufour and localisation tooling with Milkana Brace and Jonathan Burstein of Jargon. About Andrea Muttoni and German ViscusoAndrea Muttoni is the Senior Solutions Architect and Technical Evangelist for Amazon Alexa UK and IRE and German Viscuso is the Technical Evangelist at Alexa, Spain. Andrea and German are both more than qualified to speak in detail on localisation. Andrea was born in Italy and has lived in China, USA, Luxembourg, the UK and holds a German passport. While German was born in Argentina, lives in Spain and has an Italian passport! They both know their technical stuff, too (obviously). LinksContentAndrea’s article on localisation How to build an Alexa skill from scratch on YouTube Find localisation source code at: github.com/alexa Quickstart guide to the ASK CLI Join the discussion on the Alexa forums: alexa.design/forums Twitter and contactReach out to the team at: alexa.design/contactus Things we discussedCrowd in - https://crowdin.com Airtable - https://airtable.com VUI design translation with Maaike Dufour Localisation tooling with Jargon
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| 15 Apr 2019 | 4 ways to take your voice strategy to the next level | 00:14:20 | |
Since starting VUX World in February 2018, things in the voice assistant industry have changed. At the last MUXL London Meet-up, Design for Voice, I presented 4 things that have moved forward and gave 4 pointers for you to take into consideration when working on your voice strategy and voice first projects. Read the full write up on vux.world Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 17 Apr 2019 | How to use sonic branding in voice with Eric Seay | 01:01:57 | |
This week, we're digging deep into how to craft compelling audio experiences in your voice app by using sonic branding and sound design, with Audio UX Co-Founder and CMO, Eric Seay. In this episode: sonic brandingWe're advancing the conversation we had with Joel Beckerman of Man Made Music on scoring voice experiences, and get into specifics of how to make your VUX sound better with a combination of sonic branding and sound design. We discuss:
About Audio UX and Eric SeayAudio UX are a sound design and sonic branding company helping brands create a holistic Audio Aesthetic by developing an Audio DNA that is extractable, expandable, and effortlessly deployable into virtually any brand moment. Co-Founder and CMO, Eric Seay, has a background in audio production and composition, working on sound design and sonic branding initiatives for global brands. Earn monthly recurring revenue from your skills/actionsIf you build skills/actions for clients, then you can earn money from them each month through Speebly. Speebly let's your client's skill/action be accessed and interacted with via your client's website. Sign up your client to Speebly and you'll get a share of the monthly subscription fee. Plus, if you've already built the skill/action in Dialogue Flow, it'll take you 5 minutes to set up. LinksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Apr 2019 | Can design solve the biggest challenges in voice? With Mark Webster of Adobe XD | 00:58:49 | |
Why do all skills start with 'Welcome to xyz'? Is an 'assistant' the right mental model for voice experiences? Mark Webster of Adobe XD joins us to tackle some of the biggest challenges in voice and discusses how design can play a role in solving them.
About Mark WebsterMark Webster is Director of Product at Adobe, focusing on voice integration for Adobe XD. He is also responsible for driving product strategy for emerging technologies within XD. Mark joined Adobe through the acquisition of the company he founded, Sayspring, which offers a design and prototyping platform for voice interfaces. Prior to Sayspring, Mark was Director of Product for Groupon, focusing on entertainment and events. He landed at Groupon after SideTour, an e-commerce marketplace for local activities he co-founded, was acquired by Groupon in September 2013. Mark started his career with a five-year stretch at the National Basketball Association, where he worked in Creative Services. LinksListen to Hans Van Dam discuss conversational design techniques Listen to Pulse Labs discuss situational design Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 01 May 2019 | Twilio Autopilot and building trust through dialogue design with Elaine Lee | 00:57:18 | |
Kane Simms and Dustin Coates are joined by Elaine Lee, Principal Product Designer at Twilio, to discuss the ins and outs of Twilio's Autopilot bot builder and how you can build trust with users through dialogue design. Voice-Connected Home 2019, Cologne, GermanyThe Voice-Connected Home 2019 conference dives into all this and more with an incredible line up of speakers from brands like Amazon Alexa, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, BBC, BMW, Vodaphone and plenty more. Save 30% on tickets with promo code VuxVoice. Learn the art of conversation design with the Conversational Academy online course. LinksCheck out Autopilot on the Twilio website Read the documentation for Autopilot
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| 13 May 2019 | How we approach voice with Fortune 100 companies and the Kung Fu Panda Alexa skill with Greg Hedges | 01:07:05 | |
The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. Welcome to RAIN weekThis week is RAIN week. We've got two huge episodes featuring the industry-leading and ground-breaking RAIN Agency. RAIN are a dedicated voice agency and have worked with 23 of the Fortune 100 companies on voice projects. From Nike to Unilever, Campbells to Tide creating experiences from utility to leisure to kids and even product launches. In this episodeIn this first episode with RAIN, we're joined by VP Emerging Experiences, Greg Hedges, to discuss how RAIN approach voice with the Fortune 100 and we get into detail on how they built the Kung Fu Panda Alexa skill for DreamWorks and Amazon. We share some detail on what's changed in voice since RAIN pivoted in 2015 to focus exclusively on voice. We discuss how brands have moved from more tactical thinking to more strategic and how voice is something that is beginning to impact businesses, rather than be a nice marketing tick box. We also discuss how voice has changed ownership within brands, moving away from the research and innovation teams and moving into the hands of marketing. Greg shares how RAIN has changed and adapted over the years, how the tools they use have improved, how they built using the VOXA framework and he shares some of the secret sauce RAIN use to track and analyse their voice experiences using Google Analytics. We also dive deep into the Kung Fu Panda Alexa skill and discuss some of the technical detail in how it came to be, how RAIN approached the project and what Greg learned from a technical, design and strategic perspective. LinksRAINSubscribe to the RAIN newsletter (scroll to bottom) ContactThings we discussedVUI design best practice when designing for kids with Paul Jackson Will Hall and Jason Herndon of RAIN on VUX World
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| 17 May 2019 | Voice first sneaker drop with Nike and bridging the voice and social gap with Unilever with Nick Rovisa and Matt Lang | 01:09:21 | |
Become an expert conversation designer
The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. In this episodeIn part 2 of RAIN week, we're joined by Nick Rovisa, Director, Business Development, and Matt Lang, Strategy Director. The guys share their learnings on the voice industry, including how different clients perceive price i.e. how much should a voice project cost, as well as whether to think about voice from a content or app perspective. We dive deep into the work the team did with Nike in using Google Assistant to launch a new pair of sneakers at the half time interval during a televised Celtics v Lakers basketball game. We look at how the project came about, the lead times, the technical necessities of handling substantial transient traffic and the results of the project on sales. We discuss how through working with Unilever and a selection of influencers, RAIN were able to achieve a 10% conversion rate of newsletter sign ups via the Alexa skill they built. The Unilever project was a 7 week pilot with a selection of influencers in an attempt to bridge the social and voice landscape. We discuss how this new medium caused confusion with influencer licensing and how to get around that, as well as the results of the pilot and what it takes to sustain a content heavy voice experience. We discuss how to measure success and how, for some, starting to gather data to develop understanding is a better option than setting KPIs. We cover how to sell, without selling or being too overly salesy (that's a word). Finally, we chat about what's missing in voice: virality (that's another word). This includes developing our thinking on how to make experiences spread and whether to plumb voice into the mobile and social ecosystem in order to help discoverability. LinksRAINSubscribe to the RAIN newsletter (scroll to bottom) ContactEmail RAIN Things we discussedAdoption, growth and in-skill purchases with Nick Schwab Everything is a remix by Kirby Ferguson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 24 May 2019 | Connecting the Dots with Ruby Steel and Will Merrill | 00:58:38 | |
This week, we're finding out how Ruby Steel and Will Merrill made Alexa more accessible for Susan as part of BBC 2's Big Life Fix. Become an expert conversation designer
The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. In this episodeVoice first devices such as smart speakers are often touted as accessible. That's one of the main reasons voice assistants are forecast to grow in adoption and usage over the next 5 years. Voice is the new interface. Whether you're a child, an elderly person or if you have a disability of some kind, voice is here to enable to you interact with technology and connect with those around you. However, as you'll find out in this episode, there are some fundamental accessibility problems with smart speakers. Having to download the app in order to onboard, for example. Even the design of smart speakers themselves can be intimidating for some. As part of the BBC 2 Big Life Fix in the UK, Ruby Steel and Will Merrill of Smart Design Worldwide looked to address these problems for Susan. Susan has MS and requires round the clock care. Even things like changing the TV channel are a challenge for Susan and Smart Design Worldwide looked to change that. Through creating a custom build, 3D printed casing in the shape of an owl, this 'accessibility jacket' made Alexa less intimidating. Inside, were two Echos. One for Susan to address, and that one talked to the other. Why? You'll find out in today's episode. There are also plenty of insights into how to make your voice experiences more accessible. Some of which, like the use of small nested menus, go against the grain of current VUI design thinking. Prepare to be inspired and challenged. Linkshttps://smartdesignworldwide.com Smart Design Worldwide on Twitter Smart Design Worldwide on Medium Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 30 May 2019 | Voice strategy advice with Amazon Alexa Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski | 01:19:52 | |
We're honoured to be joined by Amazon Alexa Chief Evangelist, Dave Isbitski, to discuss the conversations that he's having at C-Suite level about how brands should be approaching voice and where it's all heading. Become an expert conversation designer
The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. In this episodeDave Isbitski is the Chief Evangelist at Amazon Alexa and spends his days touring the world speaking and educating brands on why they should be adopting a voice strategy and how they can do it. We chat to Dave about what he's observing at Chief Exec level within brands across different industries and how he's advising brands to approach voice. We also look at the bigger picture, where voice is heading and what brands can do today to put themselves in prime position tomorrow. This is a key episode for digital and innovation leaders and C-Suite execs as you'll hear first hand from Amazon on how you should be thinking about and approaching voice in your company. From visioning and scene setting to resourcing, planning and scaling. You'll also hear about the opportunities that are waiting for you once you start down this path. It's also an important episode for anyone working at agency level, as you'll see some of the techniques Dave uses to sell voice to big companies and understand where the technology and user behaviour is heading. We dive into details on:
Lots of you sent your questions in for us to ask Dave, which we do at the end and Dave shares plenty of tips for designers, developers, agencies and creators in this space. Thanks to everyone who sent their questions in, it was a great way to end the show. LinksDave's details: thedavedev.com Vote and propose Alexa features: alexa.uservoice.com Dave's podcast: alexadevchat.com Recent podcast appearancesHear Dave discuss the evolution of Alexa on Voicebot About Dave, his role and Alexa in Canada on Alexa in Canada Dave on what's changed in voice on Voice Summit Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 04 Jun 2019 | The Rundown 005: Google Assistant ups its game | 00:56:12 | |
What we discuss in this episodeMeet the expert: voice search and discovery with Dustin Coates:Google Assistant:What's new with Google Assistant? Announcements from I/O19 Google Assistant passes 1m actions How to templates for Google Assistant Schema mark up for how to tutorials App actions for Google Assistant Google Assistant for smart home Everything elseBecome an expert conversation designer
The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 13 Jun 2019 | How voice will change the way we shop | 00:14:36 | |
After being published in the Harvard Business Review with the article, How voice could change the way we shop, Kane gives a high level overview of the piece in a presentation to those who attended the General Assembly event, Voice Commerce: the future of shopping? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 15 Jun 2019 | The Rundown 006: WWDC, Siri, reMARS, Alexa and the future of voice shopping | 00:54:09 | |
In this episode, we discuss the Siri announcements from WWDC19, the Alexa announcements from reMARS and the Future of Voice Commerce report. The Future of Voice Commerce report Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 18 Jun 2019 | Multi-channel conversational strategies with Nico Acosta | 00:47:53 | |
This week, Dustin and Kane chat with Nico Acosta, Director of Product and Engineering at Twilio, about how companies are approaching multi-channel conversational strategies. Presented by
If you're using things like Lucid Charts and Microsoft Visio to design your conversational experiences in, you should check out BotMock. Those tools are business process mapping tools, are limited and will disrupt your rapid prototyping capability. BotMock is a purpose-built conversational design tool that'll have you rapidly prototyping and testing in no time. In this episodeWe chat to Nico Acosta about how he's observing companies approach their conversational strategy using Twilio's Autopilot platform. This builds on the episode with Elaine Lee where we spoke about Autopilot from a design perspective. This time, we're zooming out and looking at how Autopilot can fuel your whole conversational strategy across all channels. Nico has a fresh perspective on technology architecture, building on conversations we've had with Matt Hartman and Charlie Cadbury and providing detail on how to actually build once and deploy across all conversational channels, including voice assistants, chat bots and phone lines. We discuss some of the parallels and similarities between IVR design and development compared to voice assistant creation, and how the IVR, voice assistant and chatbot industries are converging. Nico also shares some insights into the kind of use cases that are working well, including a chat bot that automatically generates a website for a small business based on a short conversation. Nico also shares his dream application of Twilio Autopilot, which is all about obliterating being put 'on hold' when calling a company. LinksBecome an expert conversation designer
The Conversational Academy is a fantastic online course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Jul 2019 | Voice and the TV with TiVo's Charles Dawes and Patrick Byrden | 00:58:43 | |
Dustin and Kane speak with Charles Dawes and Patrick Byrden of TiVo about how they're helping users discover content through the power of voice, and the future of TV. Presented by
If you're using things like Lucid Charts and Microsoft Visio to design your conversational experiences in, you should check out BotMock. Those tools are business process mapping tools, are limited and will disrupt your rapid prototyping capability. BotMockis a purpose-built conversational design tool that'll have you rapidly prototyping and testing in no time. In this episodeWhen sitting down to watch TV, 60-80% of the time, people know what they want to watch. The problem is finding that thing. Knowing where to look, what channel to check, which on demand platform to search. Finding content on TV is hard. And what about the 20-40% of people who have no clue what to watch? How do they find something relevant? We've all been down that rabbit hole of skipping through film after film, trailer after trailer on Sky or Netflix, only to get tired and give up in the end. These are the problems TiVo are seeking to solve with its voice technology solution. For those of you in the US, TiVo will be a household name. A verb. And, for those in Europe and beyond, chances are, you've heard of TiVo. What you might not know, is that TiVo power the voice capability for Samsung TVs, Sky Q, Virgin and more. So even if you haven't interacted with the customer facing set top boxes, you may well have used its voice solution. In this episode, we speak to Charles Dawes, Sr Director, International Marketing, and Patrick Bryden, Sr Director, Customer Solutions about how TiVo are fixing the broken content discovery model through the use of voice. We discuss the TV landscape and the problems they seek to solve, usage of the solution and how they measure success, the technology used and architecture, personalisation and recommendations, maintenance and constant improvements, and whether the remote control is a thing of the past. LinksFollow TiVo for Business on Twitter Visit the TiVo for Business website Connect with Charles on LinkedIn Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 02 Sep 2019 | Bringing vCommerce to the web with Mike Page | 00:58:31 | |
Mike Page, CEO and Co-founder Phebi, joins us to discuss voicifying the web and collapsing the path to purchase. Presented by BotmockIf you're using things like Lucid Charts and Microsoft Visio to design your conversational experiences in, you should check out BotMock. Those tools are business process mapping tools, are limited and will disrupt your rapid prototyping capability. BotMock is a purpose-built conversational design tool that'll have you rapidly prototyping and testing in no time. In this episodeIt would be easy to read the headlines and think that voice is all about smart speakers. It'd be easy to think that it's all about 'big tech', and the big two in particular: Amazon and Google. However, voice is an interface and, as we've spoken about many times on the podcast, we'll see voice increasingly appear on every surface. Helping to bring voice into other mediums is Mike Page and his company, Phebi. It allows eCommerce websites to add vCommerce capabilities and is pushing forward the charge to bring voice interfaces to the web. In this episode, we discuss how you can add voice capability to your website, user adoption, client and business awareness, the voicified web and much, much more. LinksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 09 Sep 2019 | Conversational AI for customer care with Guillaume Laporte | 00:42:50 | |
Mindsay CEO, Guillaume Laporte joins us to share how you can use conversational AI to improve and scale your customer care and support. Win free tickets to All About Voice 2019
All About Voice is Europe's biggest and best voice event, and the team at 169 Labs are offering two free tickets to VUX World listeners! To be in with a chance of winning one of two free tickets to the event in Munich on October 11th, all you need to do is: Send a tweet using #AAV19 and tell us your favourite voice experience of 2019 so far. Winners will be announced on next week's show! In this episodeWe dig deep into how conversational AI is helping some of Europe's biggest airlines scale their customer care operations, and give you some food for thought as to how you could do the same for your industry or clients. Guillaume also shares with us some of the best surfaces to implement conversational AI, as well as some of the most successful use cases to focus on and where you should start when thinking of introducing conversational AI for the first time. We discuss the differences between customer care and customer support and the future of the two in a voice-first world. LinksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 11 Sep 2019 | It's our job | 00:16:32 | |
Is it down to Amazon to help you get your Alexa Skill discovered? Is it up to Google to send Google Assistant traffic your way? Or is it up to you, the developer or brand, to promote your wares and drive traffic yourself? Discoverability is widely touted as one of the key challenges in the rise of voice adoption and usage. But what if it's actually something else? What if, the key to unlocking the VUI is psychological? What if it's about changing our habitual usage of our phone? And, if so, is that the job of the big tech companies? Or are we all partly responsible? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Sep 2019 | From copywriter to conversational designer with Claire Medcalf | 00:52:57 | |
Claire Medcalf, Lead Creative at Rehab Agency, joins us to share her learnings on moving from a copywriter to a conversation designer and how you can do the same. Presented by BotmockBotMock is a purpose-built conversational design tool that'll have you rapidly prototyping and testing in no time. Become an expert conversation designer with the...
The Conversational Academy is THE course that'll teach you the ins and outs of conversation design. Prepare yourself for the UX role of the future and enrol on the course today. VUX World listeners will save $100 when you enrol at conversationalacademy.com. In this episodeThis week, Dustin and Kane catch up with Cannes Lions Gold-Winning Creative Lead, Claire Medcalf and discuss how she went from copywriter to conversational designer. We chat about the similarities and differences between the two, Claire's learnings in designing conversations, where the role will go in future and how you can become a conversation designer. As adoption of voice user interfaces become more prevalent, so too will the role of Conversational Designer. This episode will give you a glimpse into the life of a conversational designer and help you establish your own path to doing the same. LinksConnect with Claire on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 19 Sep 2019 | Introducing the VTA: Voice-to-Action | 00:20:07 | |
Proposing a new term for the voice first industry to consider: VTA - Voice-to-Action. It's the same as a call to action, only it's exclusive to voice first platforms and interfaces and relies on the call to action and the response being given and responded to on the voice first interface. In this video, we walk through a definition of VTA, as well as provide some examples of where Voice-to-Action is being used. We also walk through some of the other terms that have been created as the voice first industry blossoms as well as see how other industries evolved their own kind of language. For the full write up and all of the reference points and links, visit the show notes page: https://vux.world/voice-to-action To leave a comment or send us your questions to be answered on the podcast, visit https://vux.world/ask Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 23 Sep 2019 | ///addresses.broken.help with Josh Wigmore | 00:59:28 | |
Communicating address information to voice assistants is hard. Josh Wigmore, Head of Product, joins us to share how What 3 Words are making this possible. Win a ticket to All About Voice 2019All About Voice is the biggest and best voice conference in Europe. It's in Muchich on October 11th and feature talks from Amazon, Google and plenty more. Plus, yours truly is hosting the event. Win a free ticket by sending a tweet using #aav19 and tell us your best voice experience of 2019. In this episodeJosh Wigmore, Head of Product at What 3 Words joins us to share the challenges of addresses in voice, how What 3 Words are helping, how you can use What 3 Words in your voice apps and what the big tech providers need to do to allow accurate address communication. LinksTry the What 3 Words Alexa skill Follow What 3 Words on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 25 Oct 2019 | MUXL Meetup: Market adoption and user behaviour | 00:12:00 | |
Kane hosted the MUXL: Voice innovation 2019 Meetup on October 24th 2019 at Amazon HQ, and this is the opening talk. It covers the most recent smart speaker adoption rates for the UK, debates the 'voice first winter' and shares some recent behavioural trends from Code Computer Love. LinksGartner AI hype cycle, July 2019 UK Smart speaker adoption stats from Voicebot.ai Chinese smart speaker adoption, Canalys Code computer love UK smart speaker usage Survey, October 2019 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 28 Oct 2019 | Alexa, the origin story with Jeff Adams | 00:53:40 | |
Jeff Adams was the founding manager of the Alexa speech group; the team that made Alexa listen and talk. Jeff joins us to share the origin story of Alexa: where it come from and how it was created, and why the device was called 'Echo'. Jeff also explains the details behind the three core parts of speech recognition: lexicons, acoustic modelling and language modelling, how the Doppler became the Echo and about his company Cobalt Speech. Linkshttp://www.cobaltspeech.com/coblog Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 12 Nov 2019 | Discussing discoverability with Braden Ream | 00:54:09 | |
Is discoverability of Alexa skills, Google Assistant actions and other voice applications the duty of the platforms i.e. Amazon and Google, or is it the duty of the brand or developer creating them? We discuss this, as well as discoverability challenges within voice applications with Voiceflow co-founder, Braden Ream. LinksSave 10% on the Conversational Academy online conversation design course Join the VoiceFlow Facebook community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 15 Nov 2019 | Are you using all the tools? | 00:15:42 | |
This episode is a bonus episode looking at this week's discussions on LinkedIn. We complain about discoverability and retention, but who's actually doing anything about it? Are you putting the budget required behind getting your apps used and are you utilising the tools available to you to retain users? More importantly, are you creating the right thing for the right person in the first place? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 21 Nov 2019 | Voice and mobile: stop getting it confused. Live from the Bots, AI and Voice Meet-up London | 00:32:38 | |
Taken from Kane's talk at the Bots, AI and Voice meet-up in London on 20 November 2019. The meet-up was ran by Roy Murphy of Synthetic. Check out the meet-up page for info on the next meet-up. Connect with me on LinkedIn to watch all future talks live, including the panel discussion on voice design at MUXL2019. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Dec 2019 | Alliveiating lonliness with Adam Greenwood | 00:34:16 | |
Adam Greenwood is the CEO of the human tech agency, Greenwood Campbell. Last year, Adam and his team trialled placing voice assistants in residential homes in the UK to see whether voice assistants can help alleviate loneliness for senior citizens. We discuss the project and the results, as well as get Adam's take on the current state of voice and what he'd like to see in 2020. Presented by the Conversational Academy. Save 10% on the world's no.1 online conversation design course. This episode was broadcast live on LinkedIn. To catch the next live broadcast, join Kane Simms on LinkedIn. LinksWatch the Alleviating Loneliness video Podcasts referenced in this episodeAsk Marvee with Heidi Culbertson Helping Susan with Ruby Steel and Will Merrill Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 13 Dec 2019 | Live from Mobile UX London: Designing for voice panel | 00:25:33 | |
Facilitating a panel discussion on voice design with Ben Sauer of Babylon Health, Charlie Cadbury of Say it Now, Jen Heap of Vixen Labs, Rozzi Meredith of Voxly and Quirine van Walt Meijer of Microsoft. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 16 Dec 2019 | Accessibility is usability with Sierra Fontana and Carissa Merrill | 00:52:38 | |
Sierra Fontana and Carissa Merrill are working hard to make the US Bank's voice services accessible to all. They join us on this episode to share how they're approaching accessibility for voice and why it's so important to prioritise accessibility early. Presented by the Conversational Academy. Save 10% on the world's no.1 online conversation design course. LinksAll about VoiceItt with Sara Smolley Join Carissa Merrill and Sierra Fontana on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 23 Dec 2019 | User research the NPR way with Ha-Hoa Hamano | 00:54:57 | |
How do NPR approach designing voice applications? And how do they engage users to make sure that they're designing the right things for the right people, Ha-Hoa Homano, Sr. Product Manager, Emerging Platforms at NPR joins us to share all. LinksRead more at npr.design Learn with npr.codes Follow Ha-Hoa on Twitter Audio player functionality suggestion on Alexa.uservoice.com (still pending) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 03 Jan 2020 | The rundown: the start of the talking twenties | 00:53:46 | |
The first episode of the new year is both a reflection on how far we've come in the last 12 months, and what to look forward to in the year to come. This is a special episode as it's the first of a new decade. And in this episode of the rundown, we're getting deep.
Biggest news stories of 2019:Apple acquires Pullstring - Was this an acqui-hire? Or is Apple using the Pullstring tool internally? Will we ever find out? Either way, 2019 started out with a big acquisition from a big player and showed good early signs of a growing industry. Sonos acquires Snips - Given the importance of privacy, Sonos might have struck gold with Snips, the privacy first voice tech company based in Paris. The sad thing for the industry is that Sonos will not support third party activity any longer and is keeping the tech for its own speakers. This could happen more and more as big companies realise the value of having voice technology and the talent to create and implement it. I just hope there are enough tools leftover to support the community and third party developers. Voice startup funding set to triple in 2019 Google BERT: understanding searches better than ever before, and ERNIE from Baidu, which can understand subjects and topics better than ever before, too. With these two developments on the AI front, the chances of understanding what users are asking for and being able to offer the correct response is increasing. ERNIE beats humans as far as its reading comprehension capability is concerned. Most overhyped news stories of 2019:Voice interoperability initiative - On the face of it, this sounds great. Lots of organisations joining together to create standards that will allow multiple voice assistants to run on a single device so that users can choose which assistant they'd prefer to use for a given task. In reality, given that Google and Apple aren't involved in this, will it have the benefits that it proposes? Well, perhaps if Alexa is your go-to assistant, then yes. This way, Alexa is the core assistant, but then Cortana and Einstein (Salesforce) can be used for more specific tasks. Humans review Alexa recordings - Maybe it's just because we're so deeply ingrained in the industry that I assumed that humans reviewing mismatched or failed utterances would be obvious. Seemingly, though, the public did not. I understand that users are concerned with privacy around voice assistants and that the industry needs to respond and develop trust. However, I think this story in particular, and the others that followed it, blew things out of proportion and were used as scaremongering. Most underhyped stories of 2019:Google AI runs on device - When this was announced at I/O'19, it got some coverage, but it wasn't made as big a deal of than I'd have thought. This is the kind of thing that Snips used as it's core differentiator. Now, Google can run automatic speech recognition on the device and takes Google Assistant a step closer to being a privacy-first assistant. The great Google action outage - In October, Google pulled almost all of the actions on Google Assistant offline without warning. Thousands of actions just vanished. It later transpired that it was due to a potential security risk around a phishing vulnerability, but the company didn't communicate anything to anyone, at all. The story was covered by Voicebot and that's about it. Imagine if all of the apps in the app store vanished over night, without warning. I thought it was big news that deserved more coverage. Hugging Face raised $15 million - The big two (Amazon and Google) are talked about more often than anything else. We're guilty of this ourselves sometimes. But we know that voice is about more than those two. It's about more than smart speakers. It's the interface of the future and the opportunities for using voice span well beyond the big two. And so when we see a company that is trying to build the definitive natural language processing library, that's big news. Other links we spoke about in the show:How voice assistants could change the way we shop - Kane Simms, Harvard Business Review Team Say It Now finishes third in Alexa Cup Oren Jacob discusses conversation design on VUX World Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 06 Jan 2020 | Matchbox.io with Sarah Andrew Wilson | 00:50:01 | |
Sarah Andrew Wilson, Chief Content Officer at Matchbox.io, shares the secret sauce for creating the kind of Alexa skills you can build a business on. In this episode:This week, we speak to Sarah about the Matchbox.io stable of skills and discuss:
LinksQuestion of the day Facebook group Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 03 Feb 2020 | Persona design and voice actors with Adva Levin | 00:29:51 | |
Adva Levin joins us to share why you should design personas for your voice apps, how you can create them, as well as how to work with voice acting talent. Presented by Readspeaker
Readspeaker is a pioneering voice technology company that provides lifelike Text to Speech (TTS) services. Whether you're needing a TTS voice for your IVR system, voice application, automobile, robot, public service announcement system, website or anywhere else, Readspeaker have you covered. They've been in the TTS game for over 20 years and have in-depth knowledge and experience in AI and Deep Neural Networks, which they put to work in creating custom TTS voices for the world's biggest brands. If you're in the market for any form of TTS technology, check out Readspeaker today. In this episodeClifford Nass and Scott Brave, in their book Wired for Speech, showed that whether you want to or not, humans cannot help but form a picture in their minds about the voice they're hearing. Just from a voice alone, we can form an understanding of the gender, age, education, location and mood of someone, and more. So whether you create a persona for your voice applications or not, your users will form one anyway. That's why its so important to create one, so that you can try and establish some consistency in the mind of your users. Having a persona documented is also like a style guide for conversation designers. It helps guide writing and creates synergy on projects where many designers are needed. Adva Levin has created some of the most recognisable and award winning Alexa skills, including Kids Court, and also provides consultancy and design services for organisations through her company, Pretzel Labs. Most of Adva's work requires some kind of persona design. So who better to take us through the why's and the how's? LinksAdva Levin and Pretzel Labs on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 03 Feb 2020 | What is Twilio Autopilot? | 00:13:33 | |
Twilio is a magical tool, and Autopilot is its NLU platform that voice devs and designers need to check out. In this episode we're taking a look at what Autopilot is, what are its core concepts, and how it differs from other NLU services. To get $10 free, use our referral link at www.twilio.com/referral/ZQRq9v Music featured in this episode: Blossoming by Sound of Music Logjam by Sound of Music Saunter by Sound of Music Massive_Attack by Sound of Music Tiny_Spoons by Sound of Music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 05 Feb 2020 | Four Alexa Champions walk down memory lane with Nick Schwab, Eric Olsen, Tim Kahle and Steve Arkonovich | 00:37:59 | |
We catch up with 4 Amazon Alexa Champions to discuss the then, now and future of the Alexa skills ecosystem and the voice first community. Presented by Readspeaker
Readspeaker is a pioneering voice technology company that provides lifelike Text to Speech (TTS) services. Whether you're needing a TTS voice for your IVR system, voice application, automobile, robot, public service announcement system, website or anywhere else, Readspeaker have you covered. They've been in the TTS game for over 20 years and have in-depth knowledge and experience in AI and Deep Neural Networks, which they put to work in creating custom TTS voices for the world's biggest brands. If you're in the market for any form of TTS technology, check out Readspeaker today. In this episodeThe Alexa Champions program is an honorary award given by Amazon in recognition of great service to the Alexa platform and ecosystem. All four of today's guests are Alexa Champions, and they take us for a walk down memory lane and discuss:
Steve Arkonovich and Eric Olsen were two of the very first Alexa Champions. Nick Schwab followed in the next batch, then Tim Kahle. Steve was building skills before the Alexa Skills Kit even existed! Over time, he's built up a rack of skills published under his company, Philosophical Creations. His skill, Big Sky, is one of the most used skills on the platforms and is to this day a sterling example of a great voice first and multi modal experience. Some of Eric Olsen's first skills were Complibot and Insultibot, skills that generate random compliments and insults for users every day. Eric is the founder of 3PO Labs has always been a keen member of the voice community and is one of the most active members in the Alexa Slack channel, offering help, advice and guidance for budding skill developers. Nick Schwab is the founder of Invoked apps and runs some of the most used skills on the Alexa platform. His suite of sleep sounds bring in around 300,000 users per day, a side hustle that famously earned him enough money to buy a Tesla. Tim Kahle is the co-founder of 169 Labs, based out of Germany and the organiser of the All About Voice conference. Tim and co-founder, Dominik Meißner, won an Alexa hackathon in Germany in 2016, released a series of skills and founded one of the leading voice agencies in Germany off the back of it. The All About Voice conference in Munich is the leading voice first event in Europe. LinksHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| 10 Feb 2020 | How your voice assistant talks is more important than what it says with Ben McCulloch | 01:02:03 | |
Ben McCulloch shares his take on why intonation and emotion is imperative in creating high quality and trust-building voice experiences. Presented by Readspeaker
Readspeaker is a pioneering voice technology company that provides lifelike Text to Speech (TTS) services. Whether you're needing a TTS voice for your IVR system, voice application, automobile, robot, public service announcement system, website or anywhere else, Readspeaker have you covered. They've been in the TTS game for over 20 years and have in-depth knowledge and experience in AI and Deep Neural Networks, which they put to work in creating custom TTS voices for the world's biggest brands. If you're in the market for any form of TTS technology, check out Readspeaker today. In this episodeHave you ever met someone who sounds confident? What does confidence sound like? What about fear? Excitement? Sadness? Believe it or not, we can detect emotion in people's voices. We can also detect personality types. Imagine the bullish salesperson or the strict teacher or the mad scientist. You can probably imagine what these personalities sound like. Every person has a way of speaking, even if they say the exact same words. And the exact same words can be said differently in order to change the meaning of them. Take this famous line from the US TV hit show, Friends: Joey stars in a terrible play, but gets given an agent's card after his performance. Joey says "It's an agent. Maybe they want to sign me." Thinking the play was terrible, Phoebe responds "Based on this play?" Realising she's hurting Joey's feelings, she turns it around with a positive "Based on this play!!" Same words, different intonation, different meaning. The intonation and emotion in our voices also help us establish a rapport with others and build relationships. Voice assistants, right now, don't have the same intonation as humans do. Now, that's changing, of course. With things like Alexa's newsreader voice and technologies like ReadSpeaker, Lyrebird, Resemble.ai and Voice Surfer, we're getting closer to human fidelity. But we're not quite close enough, according to today's guest, Ben McCulloch. Ben is an audio engineer and sound designer who's worked across TV and video creating sound scapes and putting audio to video for many years. He has extensive experience in dialogue editing and is the perfect person to shine a light on the importance of intonation and emotion in human speech. In this episode, Ben highlights the importance of intonation and emotion in building trust with uses and in providing high quality experiences. He shares some examples of the impact this can have, guidance on when to use Text-to-Speech voices and insights on the current state of play as far as synthetic voices are concerned. LinksWatch I know that voice by Kevin Conroy, Jim Cummings, John DiMaggio and Lawrence Shapiro (Director) The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are by Anne Karpf Scoring voice experiences with Joel Beckerman Barack Obama Lyrebird fake voice Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
