VUI design best practice from user testing with 120 brands, with Abhishek Suthan and Dylan Zwick

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Kane Simms

About this episode


Pulse Labs founders, Abhishek Suthan and Dylan Zwick share their advice on VUI design best practice that they’ve learned from conducting voice first usability testing with over 120 brands.


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The search for VUI design best practice

In web design, there are standards. Common design patterns and best practice that you’ll find on most websites and apps.

The burger menu, call to action buttons, a search bar at the top of the page. These have all been tried and tested and are par for the course on most websites.

In voice, that best practice is still to be worked out. And today’s guests have begun to uncover it.

Pulse Labs is a voice first usability testing company. They conduct global remote user research by testing voice experiences for brands. Think of it almost like usertesting.com, but specifically for voice.

After working with over 120 brands, the founders; Abhishek Suthan and Dylan Zwick, have stumbled upon some of the most common mistakes that designers and developers make in their Google Assistant Actions and Alexa Skills.

Through design iterations and further testing, they’ve worked out what some of that best practice looks like.

In this episode

Over the course of this episode, we hear from Abhishek and Dylan about some of the most common mistakes designers make when it comes to voice user experience design.

We discuss how these issues can be fixed, as well as further best practice when designing for voice, including:

  • How to architect your voice app and design flat menus
  • How to handle errors and recover from failure
  • Framing experiences and handling expectations
  • When to apply confirmations and when to make assumptions
  • And a whole host more

This episode is one to listen to again and again. No doubt the standards will change as and when the tech advances and usage grows, but for now, this is probably the best start there is in defining best practice in voice.

Links

Visit the Pulse Labs website

Email Dylan Zwick

Follow Pulse Labs on Twitter

Follow Dylan on Twitter

Follow Pulse Labs on Facebook

Follow Pulse Labs on LinkedIn

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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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