The Elements of Voice First Style: A Practical Guide to Voice User Interface Design
- Length: 275 pages
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media
- Publication Date: 2022-06-28
- ISBN-10: 1098119592
- ISBN-13: 9781098119591
- Sales Rank: #1673182 (See Top 100 Books)
If you’re a new or experienced designer of conversational voice-first experiences, this handy reference provides actionable answers to key aspects of eyes-busy, hands-busy, voice-only user interfaces. Designed as a companion to books about conversational voice design, this guide includes important details regarding eyes-free, hands-free, voice-only interfaces delivered by Amazon Echo, Google Nest, and a variety of in-car experiences.
Authors Ahmed Bouzid and Weiye Ma provide far-field voice best practices and recommendations in a manner similar to The Elements of Style, the popular American English writing style guide. Like that book, The Elements of Voice First Style provides direct, succinct explanations that focus on the essence of each topic. You’ll find answers quickly without having to spend time searching through other sources.
With this guide, you’ll be able to:
- Craft just the right language to enable your voicebot to effectively communicate with humans
- Create conversational voice interfaces that are robust enough to handle errors and failures
- Design highly usable conversational voice interfaces by paying attention to small details that can make or break the experience
- Build a design for a voice-only smart speaker that doesn’t require customers to use their eyes or hands
Preface Who Should Read This Book? Why We Wrote This Book Navigating This Book O’Reilly Online Learning How to Contact Us Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Why Voice First Eyes-Free Hands-Free Ephemerality Wealth Passivity Minimal Effort Broadcasting Nonliteracy 2. When Voice First Environment Content User State Physical State Competency Availability Willingness Channels Some Scenarios Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 3. Why Voice First Automation Reduce Costs Handle Spikes Increase Customer Satisfaction Increase Agent Satisfaction Increase Revenue Enable Personalization Facilitate Task Completion Secure Privacy Increase Security 4. The Three Core Characteristics of the VUI Time Linearity Unidirectionality Invisibility 5. The Elements of Conversation The Ontology of Conversations Participant Statement Turn Conversation The Conversational Actions The Conversational States The Internal Conversational Context Conversational Signaling Signaling States Signaling Transitions 6. The Rules of Conversation The Cooperative Principle The Maxim of Quality The Maxim of Quantity The Maxim of Relevance The Maxim of Manner 7. The Basic Tenets The Voicebot Is Not a Human The Voicebot Should Be as Smart as the Data It Has—and No More! The Voicebot Should Be Consistent The Voicebot Should Be Transparent The Voicebot Should Behave Respectfully 8. The Extra-Conversational Context The State of the User Emotional State Linguistic Competence Level of Familiarity Technical Savviness Physical Readiness Task-Relevant Properties The Physical Context The Social Context The Recent Context User Patterns User-Base Patterns 9. The UI Use Case Fit An Illustrative Use Case Basic Heuristics 10. The Elements of Starting Be Brief Use an Audio Icon Drop the “Welcome to…” Never Ever Say, “Please Listen Carefully as Our Options Have Changed” Have the Voicebot Refer to Itself in the First Person Drop “You Can Interrupt Me at Any Time” Keep the Origination Context in Mind Remember the User’s Preferences Anticipate User-Specific Requests Anticipate General User-Base Requests 11. The Elements of Prompting Prompt Types Writing Effective Prompts Use Language That Is Commonly Used in Conversations Remember That the User Will Mimic the Voicebot Unless It’s Essential to the Use Case, Don’t Use Slang or Jargon Put the Most Important Information First Use Want Instead of Wish Avoid Using Speak Use Contractions Be Consistent in Your Wording Avoid Mixing Recorded and TTS Speech It’s OK for a Sentence to End in a Preposition Avoid Using Whom Minimize the Use of Please Use Incremental Prompts When Dealing with Expert Users Use Tapering Prompts to Minimize on Wordy Repetitions Request an Explicit Confirmation Only When Necessary 12. Choices Present the Most Requested Items First Keep the Menu List to Three Items or Less Keep the Menu Depth to Three Levels or Less Avoid the Construction of “for/to X, Say X; for/to Y, Say Y; for/to Z, Say Z” Don’t Use, “Please Select from the Following Options” Use the Same Part of Speech/Clausal Form When Listing Menu Options Let Users Ask, “What Are My Choices?” Let Users “Climb Back” the Menu Offer to Repeat the Menu Options After a 3-Second Pause Turn on Barge-In for Expert Users Include and Teach Shortcuts 13. Managing Failure Types of Failure No-Input No-Match Misrecognition System Failure Causes of Failure No-Input No-Match Misrecognition System Best Practices Always Have the Voicebot Take the Blame Give the User Three Chances Offer Explicit Examples of How to Respond Be Careful When You Reprompt Establish “Safety Points” Never Terminate a Conversation Unilaterally—Especially During Recovery Don’t Be Repetitive During Recovery Orient the User About Where They Are Give the User Information About the Issue Do Not Be Overly Apologetic 14. Help Strategies Tell the User That Help Is Available Detect When the User Needs Help Structure Your Help Mention the Basic Task the Voicebot Is Trying to Solve Offer Help to the Most Frequently Encountered Problems First Return from Where You Left Off After Giving Help Be Concise and Specific with Your Help Use Context to Guide Your Explanations Illustrate Your Explanations with Examples Offer Help Only When It Is Needed 15. Verbal Dialogue Marking Acknowledge Receipt of Information Announce That the User Is About to Receive Some Information Mark Sequences Mark the Beginning and End of a Section Mark Failures Show Light at the End of the Tunnel Indicate Implicitly That the Voicebot Still Owns the Turn Tell the User Explicitly That They Are Being Placed on Hold Don’t Repeat the Same Marker Twice in a Row Pay Attention to the Markers After a Failure Strategy 16. Nonverbal Dialogue Marking Types of Nonverbal Audio Opening the Dialogue Signaling That It’s the User’s Turn to Speak Signaling That the Voicebot Is Busy Doing Something and Is Holding the Turn Waiting for the User to Give an Answer After a No-Input Announcing a List of Choices Entering a New Section Marking Transition from One List Item to the Next Announcing Help Ending the Conversation 17. Language Design On “Naturalness” Key Terms Designing an Effective Language Model Clearly Define the Problems That Your Voicebot Can Help the User With Communicate Why the Voicebot Exists and What It Can Help the User Do Outside of the Voicebot Spend Time Building a Clean Ontology Do Not Design Your Language from the Armchair Go Explicit When Recovering from a Language Error 18. On Silence Prior to Listing Options Between Options in a Menu List Between Categories of Options When Interacting with Power Users After Echoing Before and After TTS Prompts 19. The Elements of Closing Allow the Users to Explicitly End the Dialogue Allow the User to Request a Human When the User Has to Wait, Provide a Waiting Time Estimate Provide the Option to Cancel a Transfer to a Human Keep the “While-You-Wait” Audio Relevant Understand the User’s State of Mind When You Play the “While-You-Wait” Audio Never Say, “Your Call Is Important to Us” Don’t Make the User Repeat to the Human Information They Provided to the Voicebot Make the Human Agent Aware That the Customer Was Interacting with the Voicebot Avoid Transferring Users from One Voicebot to Another Don’t Play Phone Rings Unless You Are Transferring Directly to a Human Reassure Users of Success Don’t Provide Any Crucial New Information Give the User a Quick Tip Offer to Reach Back 20. Voice First Notifications Fundamental Considerations Key Notification Attributes Notification Urgency Notification Content Delivery Context Key Form Factors Far-Field Voice Near-Field Voice In-Ear Voice Some Best Practices Be Mindful of the Receiver’s Time Zone Provide Some Context Cut to the Chase Repeat the Important Information Provide the User with a Way to Get More Details Some Scenarios Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 21. Laying Out the Foundations Bring Together All the Key Players Define the Business Goals Define User Needs and Intent Identify User Tasks Identify Usage Patterns Define the Voicebot’s Voice Register 22. The Key to Successful Product Launches Write Everything Out in Full Sentences Your Press Release Needs to Be Crystal Clear Your Answers Are Given in One or Two Paragraphs at Most, and Not Much More Answer the Basic Questions First Describe Clearly the Research You Have Done Be Modest and Cautious in Your Claims and Statements Make Your Document Readable by Everyone List the Functional Requirements in Terms of What the User Can Do Describe the Intended Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in Detail 23. The Elements of Deployment Product Management Product Marketing UX Research UX Design Development Quality Engineering Functional Testing Traversal Testing Stress Testing Beta Testing Program Management 24. Post-Launch Monitoring Sources of Information Interaction Logs The Audio of the Interactions End Users The Basic Questions Where Are Users Abandoning the Session? Where Are Users Asking to Be Connected to a Human Agent? Where Are Users Saying the Wrong Things? Where Are Users Not Saying Anything? Where Are Users Speaking Too Soon? What Is the Noise Level of Your User’s Environment? What Options Are Your Users Asking For? How Are Users Feeling About the Voicebot? 25. The Elements of Voice First Success Abandonment Rate Automation Rate Average Number of Failures per Session Average Number of Failures per Task Average Task Completion Time Containment Rate First-Use Resolution Rate Task Completion Rate Task Initiation Rate Time to Task 26. Coda A. The 10 Sources of Voice First Failures! B. Demonstrating Voice First Remove All Prompts That Explicitly Talk About Failure Don’t Speak Over Prompts Don’t Have the Voicebot Talk for More Than 10 Seconds When It Starts Without Giving the Turn Back to You Test the Voicebot with the Same Equipment You Will Use in the Demo Have Two or Three Backup Ways to Demo the Voicebot Test the Application in the Same Room and Environment Where You Will Do the Demo Know How to Gracefully End a Telephony-Based Voicebot Ask for Silence Never Improvise or Show Off While Demoing If, for Whatever Reason, the Voicebot Fails, Be Honest About Why It Failed No Cheat Sheets! Speak Normally Don’t Leave Long Silences Between Words When You Speak Keep It Really Short C. Useful Matrices The Assessment Matrix Cheat Sheet Value-Usability Matrix Feature Expectation Matrix Automation-Complexity Matrix Quadrant 1 Quadrant 2 Quadrant 3 Quadrant 4 A Voice First Glossary References Index About the Authors
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