Phillip Hunter

Phillip Hunter has been designing digital conversations for 20 years. He started with touch-tone phone applications. More recently, he has worked on Alexa and other voice-based technologies.

Phillip and I talked about:

how fun it is to "talk about talking"

his current work at [24]7

his early work developing touch-tone applications back in the 90s

his evolution from developer to product designer and product manager

the history of voice interfaces, from trying to mimic the human mind to the current ability to augment human intelligence with massive computing power

the evolution for voice technology from simple recognition and basic synthesizing to the convergence of processor power that enabled desktop computers to do speech recognition

the origins of voice business applications in the customer-service space

how cloud computing enabled the mass adoption of voice technologies

the rise of machine learning and its impact on voice

how we are now at a point where "machines are about as performant as humans" in terms of speech recognition but still pretty far behind human communication capabilities

"the average four-year-old is still learning much faster than any of our machine learning processors"

how the combination of voice and cloud technologies and broadband connections that connect them enable systems like Amazon's Alexa service

the importance of the emergence of language: "once particular sounds started being associated with one or more particular meanings, then we had a tool that enabled us to do everything that we've done in humanity up to this point"

how much of voice tech is still human augmented - there are still checkpoints where a human will evaluate a voice interaction and determine whether the translation or transcription is right or wrong

"just-in-time content"

the differences between a stable-context-variable-data situtation like reporting a bank balance versus more dynamic situation in which a more robust content strategy is needed

the hypothesis that "the machines are teaching us to talk like them"

how "part of what we don't have yet in this technology is a deep appreciation and understanding for what conversation really is" - and current approaches to bridging that gap

conversational structures and tools

the role of signals like gestures and facial expressions in human communication

the importance of being able to predict the track of a conversation and check in on its course and how that's the next step in machine conversations

an analogy between tech-based conversations and adjusting conversational expectations based on a child's age

the difficulties of creating truly personalized conversational content

"language as an affordance" as a concept - and its implications for folks who want to get into this field

the propensity of experience designers to "use language as a system-centered form filling vehicle" and ensuing limitations

the importance of UX designers want to create conversational experiences to really study language

some books that he recommends:

Designing Voice User Interfaces: Principles of Conversational Experiences, Cathy Pearl

How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation, N. J. Enfield

his new conference launching in October, Points Made

Phillip's Bio

A technology product design leader for 20 years, Phillip Hunter works at the edges where new experiences are created. A veteran of small and large companies, he is passionate about what people need and want, how teams work, how to understand and influence complex systems, and the little details of product design that make big differences.

Phillip loves living,