Conversations Squared #1 – Emily Uematsu Banzhaf

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About this episode

Emily Uematsu Banzhaf, Content Designer at WillowTree, talks to Ben McCulloch about conversation design. Emily is also a conversation/VUI designer, she leads the ethical use taskforce at Open Voice Network, and she’s a professional violinist!

We talked about personas, ethics, the data that can be collected from your voice, ear training and the sound of conversations.

In this episode

  • 00:00 – Introduction
  • 02:00 – 30 seconds, go!
  • 04:06 – What does ‘bot persona’ mean to you?
  • 06:06 – What’s the purpose of a bot’s persona?
  • 06:56 – How ‘human’ should bot personas be?
  • 11:12 – The risks of collecting user data
  • 12:32 – The issues of speaking legal-ese
  • 15:22 – What data about a user can be collected from their voice?
  • 19:17 – Should a bot be ready to speak about things other than their use-case?
  • 24:56 – How much does the sound of the voice matter?
  • 26:12 – Ear training is useful in conversation design
  • 27:07 – How similar is phrasing on violin to verbal communication?
  • 29:17 – Hearing issues in TTS when you have ‘perfect pitch’
  • 30:20 – Do you think of music when you adjust SSML?
  • 31:20 – Do you speak your copy out loud to get a feel for the SSML?
  • 31:56 – Outro

Join our next webinar, conversational commerce: how AI-powered digital workers can boost sales: Find out more: https://vux.ai/conversational-commerce-how-ai-powered-digital-workers-can-boost-sales/

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Kane Simms

A strategic AI advisor who, for the past decade, has helped business leaders and product owners transform customer experience using conversational and generative AI.

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