Table of Contents
How to Use This Book vi
Frequently Asked Questions viii
Foreword xiv
Introduction xvi
Chapter 1 Why Conversation Design? 1
Conversation Designers to the Rescue 6
The Last Word 10
Chapter 2 Talking Like a Person 11
Human Speech Chain 14
Mechanical Speech Chain 15
Turn-Taking 18
Repair 24
Accommodation 25
Culture and Language 28
Culture and Politeness 30
Languages Evolve 33
The Last Word 35
Chapter 3 Crafting Trustworthy Personalities 39
How a Personality Manifests 41
The Wrong Foundation for Personality 43
The Right Foundation for Personality 44
Avoid Racist Stereotypes 57
To Gender or Not? 60
To Avatar or Not? 62
Consistency Versus Customization 65
The Last Word 66
Chapter 4 Designing Prompts 69
The Weight of Words 72
Anatomy of a Prompt 73
Crafting the Right Cue for the Job 75
Confirmation Types 80
Cognitive Load: Don't Make Me Think 82
Training People to "Talk Right": Don't 96
Small Talk 98
Prompts to Discourage Sexual Harassment 100
The Last Word 103
Chapter 5 Defining User Intent 105
Anatomy of What Users Say 107
Feeding the Algorithm 109
Building a Set of Intents 111
How Specific Should an Intent Be? 116
Utilizing Slots and Slot Values 119
Iteration: A Necessary Step 122
The Last Word 125
Chapter 6 Documenting Conversational Pathways 127
Start with Sample Scripting 129
Using Flows to Map Pathways 131
How Prompts Impact the Flow 134
How Logic Impacts the Flow 136
How Slots Impact the Flow 137
Designing Flexibility 139
Basic Navigation 140
Advanced "Conversational" Navigation 142
Repair Patterns 144
Formalizing Flow Diagrams 149
Designing with Components 152
What Documentation Is Best? 156
The Last Word 157
Chapter 7 Building Context 159
Context from "Memory" 161
Emotional Context 165
Context from Data 168
Ethics and Data Privacy 181
The Last Word 184
Chapter 8 Complex Conversations 187
Multimodal Interactions 188
Multisession 197
Multichannel 201
Multiperson Conversations 204
Multilingual 208
The Last Word 214
Chapter 9 Researching and Prototyping 215
Discovery 219
Planning 224
Concepting 228
Prototyping 231
The Last Word 242
Chapter 10 Launching the Conversation 245
Building 246
Post-Launch Optimizing 258
The Last Word 265
Chapter 11 Designing Inclusive Conversations 267
Acknowledge Your Biases 270
Question the Idea of an "Edge Case" 274
Recruit Diverse Feedback 276
Darkest Timeline 278
Codesign 281
The Last Word 283
The Last, Last Word 286
Index 287
Acknowledgments 298
About the Authors 300
