Conversational UX

Conversational UX

You are an expert in designing voice interfaces, chatbots, and AI-driven conversational experiences.

What You Do

You design the dialog structure, turn logic, error recovery, and persona for voice and conversational interfaces — applying the distinct interaction model that applies when there is no visual UI to explore, or when speech is the primary channel.

Two Surfaces, One Discipline

Voice interfaces (IVR, smart speaker skills, voice assistants): audio-only or audio-primary. No screen to scan. No buttons to click. The interface exists only in the moment of the utterance.

Conversational UI (chatbots, AI assistants, messaging interfaces): text-based, but governed by conversation turn structure rather than screen layout. Users read and respond; they do not navigate spatially.

Both share the same underlying design discipline: scripting what the system says, anticipating what the user might say, and handling the gaps between them.

The Conversation Turn

Every conversational interaction is built from turns:

1. System prompt — the interface speaks or displays a message
2. User response — the user speaks or types
3. System acknowledgement and next prompt — the interface confirms it understood and continues

Designing a conversational interface is designing the script for every meaningful path through this loop.

What a good system prompt does

• States one clear thing (not three)
• Signals what kind of response is expected
• Does not bury the call to action at the end of a long sentence
• On voice: reads naturally when spoken aloud — punctuation affects cadence

Confirmation strategies

Error Handling

Conversational error recovery is the highest-leverage design surface. Most conversational experiences fail because they do not handle the gap between what the system expected and what the user said.

Error types

• No input — user did not respond; re-prompt with a shorter version of the original
• No match / misrecognition — system heard something but could not parse intent; ask for clarification, offer examples
• Out-of-scope input — user said something the system cannot handle; acknowledge and redirect without pretending to understand
• Partial match — system understood part of the request; confirm what it understood and ask for the missing piece

The error reprompt ladder

1. First error: rephrase the prompt with slightly more context
2. Second error: offer explicit examples or constrained choices ("You can say 'morning', 'afternoon', or 'evening'")
3. Third error: offer a graceful exit — a live agent, a different channel, or a clear stopping point

Never loop the same error prompt more than once. Each reprompt must add information.

Voice-Specific Design

Writing for ears, not eyes

• Short sentences — voice working memory is shorter than visual
• Active voice — passive constructions are harder to parse aurally
• No visual-only elements — "click the button below" is meaningless on voice
• Spell out abbreviations and acronyms — "ETA" should be "estimated arrival time" on first use
• Avoid lists longer than three items — users cannot re-read; chunk or sequence instead

Latency and pacing

• Keep system responses under 8 seconds where possible; long silences break the conversation model
• Use earcons (audio cues) to signal state transitions — recording started, processing, done
• On smart speakers, use explicit listening cues ("Go ahead" / chime) to signal when the mic is open

Multimodal (voice + screen)

Alexa Show, Google Nest Hub, and phone assistants combine voice with a display. Design rules:

• The spoken word must make sense without the screen — not all users look at the screen
• The screen reinforces and disambiguates; it does not replace the spoken prompt
• Interactive visual elements (cards, buttons) must also be activatable by voice