Last Sunday I had the honour to speak at the Effective, Effectual and Ethical Communication Conference organised by the Simple Language Students’ Association at the University of Warsaw. I was thrilled to share some insights in my “Effective voicebots. Good practices in conversation design” lecture.
For me, simple language as a concept is part of general accessibility. Designing with various users in mind – with their preferences and limitations – is key to inclusive, universal products. Therefore, it seemed just appropriate to show up, listen to others’ findings and to share my own experience regarding voicebots.
Whenever I design my voicebots – both the scenario logic and texts – I try to keep it as simple and concise as possible. Contrary to the way I usually speak 😀 Even though I like to talk a lot, my voicebots do not. They are user-centric, meaning they rather listen, understand, and then give a proper response, which is condensed, short, yet informative enough.
Gricean maxims
I learnt about Gricean maxims some time ago and found them to be very useful in the context of speech assistant design. No wonder the Conversation Design Institute mentions them in their courses! If one of the most known CxD educational spaces bases their scenario building advice on Grice’s concepts, then it’s definitely worth noting. And just how much? Well, I want to find out by doing some actual academic research. There is something I have in mind, let’s see how my ideas will evolve 🙂
I think my little talk (15 minutes is not enough) was met with enthusiasm. It was definitely fun for me to listen to other participants’ input and questions, and take part in a joint panel afterwards.
For more about simple language, feel free to visit the Association’s FB page here. I’m happy I had the chance to discuss voicebots and meet other engaged people, including Dr. Inez Okulska, an incredibly inspiring NLP specialist whose talk opened the second conference day. She mentioned a new Polish magazine coming out soon, the hAI Magazine. I’ve already ordered it and will share whether it’s worth buying… Just kidding, I am certain it is! I will just let you know why exactly <3
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