Companies are conversational

When you think about Conversation Design, I'd be willing to bet chatbots or phone trees come to mind. And you'd be right. Conversation Design really got its start from people planning out IVR systems (Interactive Virtual Response a.k.a. phone trees). Today, though, the practice of Conversation Design has been going through a sea change with the emergence and explosive adoption of LLMs (Large Language Models).

There's far more to Conversation Design than the technology that powers it. Instead, it's pervasive through every experience a person has with a company. Every click, ad, push notification, email, press release, and call to customer service.

All design is conversational? ​

A few years ago, Adam Connor (author of Discussing Design) and I were talking about the practice of Conversation Design and how it relates to Product Design writ large. That's when he dropped the question; isn't all design conversational?

Short answer: sure. Product Design, as an abstract concept, can be framed as designing a dialog; a back-and-forth between user and product. Dialogs are the beating heart of Conversation Design. When you look at good examples of product design, some of the precepts of conversation start showing up: alerts are "loud" and attention grabbing, 404's have some humor or personality, errors change tone to guide users rather than place blame.

One of the principles of Conversation Design is to keep the conversation moving forward. Both sides of the conversation need to actively participate for that to happen. However, the products we're used to using are largely reactionary. A person clicks a button and the product reacts by showing a different screen. This is a one-sided conversation. People are simply responding to a reaction because the product isn't actively participating. The product isn't listening to you or understanding your needs, it's simply carrying out a command.

Buffet vs. table service ​

Think of a restaurant. Most products are like a buffet; it's apparent what's available then you decide what to eat, how much, and when. Conversational products are like a trendy, table service restaurant that has no menu. A server comes to your table and the two of you have to cooperate – engaging in dialog – in order to understand what's available, determine what you're going to have, whether there are any allergies, then server will proactively check in on you and deliver your food and drinks.

The key here is knowing what's available to you. Apps and websites have it easy because they're visual first. More information can be packed in and processed faster than it can through only words. Traditional product vs conversational experiences really start to diverge here.

Say you're on a ecomm site, like Amazon, trying to find a certain item but you don't quite know what it's called or how to effectively describe it. A quick search would give a list of a things that match what you typed or closely match. It's almost effortless to discover what's available but it's not actually returning what you're looking for. You're left to figure it out on your own, do a bunch more searching, scroll through pages of products, or go somewhere else. Conversational products can ask questions to help understand what your looking for and provide you with specific results. There's less fumbling around even though you aren't immediately seeing what else is available.

This is the challenge of discovery. It can set the stage for delight, excitement, and personalization but can also be frustrating, mysterious, or confusing. While it may seem more daunting and opaque with a conversational experiences, it can be far more effective than the traditional buffet-style product experience.

Rapport and trust ​

Writing prompts and responses, determining intents and training phrases, diagraming conversational logic and branching user flows have traditionally been the bread and butter of conversational design. That's a reductive and tactical view; like saying fonts, grids, border radius, and color palettes are the bread and butter of product design. They're aspects of the practice but not why the practice is valuable.

Conversations are used to convey information (the why). A dialog is the functional part (the how). The hidden value of conversations is building relationships. It's where rapport and trust is built, maintained, or eroded. So as a practice, Conversation Design becomes highly valuable when applied at a higher altitude, at the product level but also at the organization level.

Think about a company that you encounter a lot. Maybe it's Amazon. Maybe you like or dislike them, enjoy using their products and services, or hate it because it's something you have to do. Regardless, you have a relationship with that company. Now think about how you interact with that company versus how it interacts with you. Is it proactive in any way? Maybe trying to get you to buy something or alerting you to a sale? Maybe that only happens after you opened up their app? Is the company trying to understand you or reflect back that it's listening to you in anyway? Or maybe, it's purely functional – you open their app to do a thing then close it and forget about it until the next time you need to do that thing.

A repeat customer is more valuable than a one-time customer. That's business 101. You're more likely to create repeat customers when you have a good relationship with them. That's one edge small businesses have over massive companies. Applying Conversation Design at a high level, framing interactions as a continuous conversation, is one way companies can have good relationships with it's customers in a personal way.

Omni-channel and omni-time ​

Conversation Design, when applied to a company's product experiences, is the nurturing of relationships over time. The relationship between a person and a company or a user and a product. This doesn't happen at a single point in time or interaction. You don't have a great relationship because someone ordered something from you once. Relationships are built over time and across channels.

Looking at it this way quickly brings into focus that every touchpoint is important, from both a business and product sense but also as a holistic experience. Every targeted email or ad from the marketing team, every push notification from the product team, every call to customer service is a continuation of that larger conversation. Every interaction is part of a continuing conversation that can build, maintain, or erode a person's relationship with that company.

It's everywhere ​

Not all design is conversational, not all products are conversational, but all experiences are part of a conversation. Every experience you design, every product you launch, every email campaign you run should be viewed through the lens of how it’s contributing to the ongoing conversation with each person.