Taking Turns

Thorben Stemann wasn't supposed to build and oversee a chatbot - but a customer's request turned him into a chatbot developer. On the latest episode of Taking Turns, the former project manager talks about the importance of language and translations, how chatbot became an advantage for his company, and how relationship between users and his bot took a strange turn.

Conversation design was the perfect place from Maaike Coppens; Already being a UX and languague enthusiast, she fould a way to combine her two favourite fields into one. In our latest episode of Taking Turns, Coppens joins us to emphasize the importance of good UX, inclusion, and especially words - sometimes an afterthought, but always a potential for making the user angry or frustrated. How do you do it the right way? That's why Maaike is here. Enjoy the show!

Hillary Black hailed from social media, branding and copywriting, and joined the chatbot movement early - to become an expert in the field. Now, she can tell that those two worlds look similar to her in some aspect; recall a funny story about her days in Vine and Twitter; and explain why here current two-way texting robot at Mav is "a combination of like all of the best things that I've ever done".

"I could feel a breakup is coming, although I couldn't see his face, I couldn't hear his voice".  All of us suffer an eventual heartbreak; but instead of hanging his head down, Greg Bennett became intrigued with the place where it happened -  the textual chat. Now, as a conversation design lead for Salesforce, he made the best out of it - dissecting the message to its tiniest components: commas, emojies, periods, pauses. This interview is a deep, fascinating dive into the amazing world of linguistics. We hope you'll enjoy it like we did.

What's an improv comedy - a wild, vibrant, full of laughter event, and a chatbot - a planned, mechanical process, have in common? If you ask Kent Morita from Soul Machines, the answer is simple: a lot. Morita joins us for a great episode of Taking Turns, to talk about the importance of humor in a bot, the importance of face expressions, and an how an awkward anecdote led him to actually have more confidence in his workplace.

How being a live chat agent at a bank can make somebody ready for being a conversation designer? And how home beer brewing can make you the next conversation designer? We talked it over with Henry Ginsburg, who's running Michelle, the chatbot for University of the People - which helps people from all over the world get an American accredited, tuition-free degree, completely online.

When talking about creativity in fighting the Coronavirus pandemic, Chatbots are a great way of reaching and teaching a lot of people in a short time. Michelle Parayil works at Haptik.ai, a company that its Corona chatbot became the Indian government's official tool and chatted with 25 million people only in its first month. In this episode of Taking Turns, Michelle join us to share her experience - and talk about how one bad copy can ruin a customer's day.

Mary Tomasso's story is, in a way, the story of the remote working online industry. She started working online at 2009, by creating content and helping hundreds of people getting their business into the virtual space; then, when conversational AI entered the field, she became a leader in it, too. In the 2nd episode of our new web series, Taking Turns, Mary shares her experience, and also gives a compliment that made us blush.

After working in the intersection of human and computer's communication for about 20 years, Dr. Michelle Zhou - CEO and founder of Juji.io - knows a lot about how to make this connection as natural as possible. At our new show, Taking Turns - A conversation designed for conversation designers - Zhou joined us to tell about her expertise, share some tips - and explain what happens when a chatbot has a brain freeze.