VUX World

This week, Dustin Coates and I discuss the importance of sound design in voice experiences with the founder of Man Made Music, Joel Beckerman.

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Man 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:

• The importance of scoring experiences, such as theme parks and electric cars
• Branding opportunities within sound design
• Sonic cues and subtlety
• User centric sound design
• What's missing from most voice experiences?
• What happens when you recreate the sound scapes for three Alexa skills?
• Are smart speakers changing audio branding?
• What's involved in creating a sonic identity?
• The importance of a brand anthem
• How brands can get started with sonic branding for voice assistants
• What will the future sound like?

Visit 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

Watch all of the IMAX videos

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This week, Dustin Coates and I discuss the importance of sound design in voice experiences with the founder of Man Made Music, Joel Beckerman.

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Man 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:

• The importance of scoring experiences, such as theme parks and electric cars
• Branding opportunities within sound design
• Sonic cues and subtlety
• User centric sound design
• What's missing from most voice experiences?
• What happens when you recreate the sound scapes for three Alexa skills?
• Are smart speakers changing audio branding?
• What's involved in creating a sonic identity?
• The importance of a brand anthem
• How brands can get started with sonic branding for voice assistants
• What will the future sound like?

Visit 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

Watch all of the IMAX videos

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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10,000 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.

• Why voice for the older generation is so important
• What opportunities exist in providing value to older people both on the B2C and B2B side
• How Ask Marvee is helping the older generation's wellbeing
• How to segment and target this market (they're not all the same)
• What's different when designing a voice experience for the elderly
• VUI design best practice for older adults

Visit the Ask Marvee website

Follow Ask Marvee on Twitter

Follow Heidi on Twitter

Email Heidi: [email protected]

Watch Heidi's talk at the Voice Summit 2018

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A deep dive into the three pillars of conversation design: psychology, technology and creative writing, with Robocopy's Hans Van Dam.

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Conversation 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.

This 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:

• Why understanding the technology is important. Human and computer brains are different. Appreciating what's different and the constraints you're operating in will help you work within your limits and get the most of of your conversation.
• Why psychology is key. We discuss things like anchoring, framing, social proof and plenty more psychological tools that can help you improve the user experience and success of your conversations.
• Why copywriting is all you have and how to make the most of it. We've covered how writing for the screen is different to writing for the ear in our conversation with Oren Jacob of Pullstring. We take that concept further in this episode and discuss some of the mistakes brands make when designing conversation, as well as who should be designing them.

We also get into detail on things like the importance persona design, measuring success and a whole host more.

Visit the Robocopy website

Check out the Conversational Academy

Follow Hans on Twitter

Nudge by Case Sustein and Richard Thaler on Amazon

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing Fiction

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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.

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.

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.

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In 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.

Over 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:

• How to architect your voice app and design flat menus
• How to handle errors and recover from failure
• Framing experiences and handling expectations
• When to apply confirmations and when to make assumptions
• And a whole host more

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.

Visit the Pulse Labs website

Email Dylan Zwick

Follow Pulse Labs on Twitter

Follow Dylan on Twitter

Follow Pulse Labs on Facebook

Follow Pulse Labs on LinkedIn

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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.

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• The current state of play in social voice, how most voice first social platforms are using an old social media model and how SoundBite differs.
• Design challenges in designing social voice platforms, multi modal implications and perfecting a narrow use-case.
• Details of the inherent technology challenges built into today's voice assistants and how to compensate for it with VUI design.
• The future of the voice assistant technology landscape and how SoundBite are working towards it, including using Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and acoustic modelling instead of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

SoundBite website

Follow Daniel on Twitter

Email Daniel

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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:

• How voice plus other exponential technologies will disrupt every industry & government agencies
• What voice looks like when it's combined with robotic process automation (RPA) and more
• What does voice mean for a digital transformation strategy for an enterprise?
• How Silver take a human-centered approach to voice by doing ethnographic research
• Organisational culture and whether workers are ready for enterprise level voice
• The future of voice and whether we'll see a billion dollar company built on a voice platform

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https://silverdrip.com

https://www.shawnkanungo.com/

Silver on Instagram

Silver on Twitter

Silver on Facebook

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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?

That'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.

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.

It'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.

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 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.

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 announced a whole host of Alexa enabled deviceslast week, including:

• Echo Dot V2 and Echo Plus V2
• A new Echo Show (with a 10 inch screen)
• Echo Auto (for the car)
• Echo Sub (a subwoofer)
• Fire TV Recast (a TV set top box)
• An Alexa-injected microwave
• A clock, with Alexa built in
• Echo Input (turns any speaker into a smart speaker)
• A Ring security camera
• A smart plug
• An amp

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.

The 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.

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.

This 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bixby 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.

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