#13 The one with all the tea
Brought to you by the world's best yapper 💃🏾 and the CxD gossip girl 💅🏼
It’s a small world 🌍
It's a world of laughter, a world of tears It's a world of hopes and a world of fears There's so much that we share that it's time we're aware It's a small world after all
The conversation design industry is infinitesimally small. From the outside looking in, it might appear as though there are a ton of companies with CxDs on the team or many different fountains of knowledge and industry experts. That’s simply not the case at all. We’ve all at least heard of each other, particularly the more outspoken ones— i.e. the ones writing thought pieces, giving interviews, or going to events. We know each other, even if we don’t know each other :)
Having a tighter knit community means a few different things. For one, our profession is extremely welcoming. This is a relief for newcomers. No one is truly “unreachable”. The vast majority of conversation designers are 1 LinkedIn DM or email away. This is great! The community never really loses its charm. People are kind and willing to help others. On the other hand, it also means there’s a very fine line between being transparent and burning bridges.
We never got to do our 2023 year-end recap, Voice This! edition, but we do have 1 learning that sticks out from last year: don’t put companies or hiring managers on blast if you get rejected from a role. There are a lot of factors that go into a hiring decision. Assume good intentions. And in this economy? Assume there’s 5x as many people competing for the same jobs than there were in 2020.
Based on a few informal conversations earlier this year, people don’t really forget things in the CxD community. One such notorious LinkedIn post (now deleted) still lives on in people’s memories, and not in a good way. For anyone currently fighting it out in the toughest job market ever, this is our advice to you: if you don’t want people to remember it, don’t post it.
Sometimes our reputation is all we have. Staying neutral is also part of building your personal brand.
2024 CxD news so far
Jan
In a shocking turn of events, Greg Bennett, CxD legend and Beyoncé fan, known for his constant advocacy of CxD at Salesforce, left his role to join ZEALS as their Head of Prompt Engineering. What does this mean for the face of CxD leadership? Does Salesforce still have a CxD strategy?
Feb
Women in Voice changes leadership. The new Executive Director is Deborah Akinyele. Time will tell if WiV can regain their pervious momentum and funding. Maybe even bring back some of their well-loved initiatives (e.g. the annual mentorship match-up RIP).
Mar
Another year, another European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit! It’s a comfort to know that CxD conferences may come and go, but the European chatbot summit lives on. We didn’t get a chance to peek into their sessions, but there’s about an hour of the livestream online.
A moment of silence for our CxDs who suffer in silence. Elaine’s recent “Not all conversation designers” piece struck a nerve with quite a few people. It’s sad to realize this is a canon event. Where do we go from here? How can we keep CxDs inspired?
Apr
Amazon is quietly making moves to rebuild their voice assistant strategy. This, of course, is happening less than 6 months since hundreds of roles were eliminated in their Alexa division. Surprise: there’s 1 Sr. CxD role open. Will anyone make the cut? Feels like reality TV 🍿
Conversational Collective is BACK! It’s so refreshing to see an oldie but goodie come back with renewed vigor. Not all CxD groups that go quiet can bounce back. CC is the exception and we’re so lucky to have them 🥹
If you’ve ever wanted to share your POV as a professional in the space, you can now apply to speak!
AI Corner 📚
AI Design Guidelines
Elaine Lu’s Master's research from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design. “Qualities of Great AI Experiences” - pub.towardsai.net/qualities-of-great-ai-experiences-b77f0d670ee7
Emily Campbell’s “Shape of AI” identifies patterns that are developing from Gen AI products - www.shapeof.ai
IBM’s “Design Principles for Generative AI Applications” - medium.com/design-ibm/design-principles-for-generative-ai-applications-791d00529d6f
Also, IBM’s Design for AI site - www.ibm.com/design/ai/
Google’s People + AI Guidebook - pair.withgoogle.com/guidebook
PwC's Responsible AI Toolkit - www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/data-and-analytics/artificial-intelligence/what-is-responsible-ai.html
[Video] 🎬🍿 Stanford CS547 - Human-Computer Interaction Seminar Series - www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rMyupDF2O00r19JsmolyXdD
AI Headlines
Why AI is far removed from real “understanding” - medium.com/artificial-intelligence-lab-brussels/what-is-a-chair-part-i-why-ai-is-far-removed-from-real-understanding-d03776e7cacb
“Linguist Emily M. Bender Has a Word or Two About AI” - analyticsindiamag.com/linguist-emily-m-bender-has-a-word-or-two-about-ai/
“The 1,000 contractors in India working on [Amazon]’s Just Walk Out technology offer a stark reminder that AI isn’t always what it seems.” - www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-03/the-humans-behind-amazon-s-just-walk-out-technology-are-all-over-ai
How to stop your data from being used to train AI - www.wired.com/story/how-to-stop-your-data-from-being-used-to-train-ai/
No, AI user research is not “better than nothing” - uxdesign.cc/no-ai-user-research-is-not-better-than-nothing-its-much-worse-5add678ab9e7
[Podcast] 🎧 Bonus Episode: Design’s Role as AI Expands (Feat. Don Norman and Sarah Gibbons, VP at NN/g)
Thanks for Reading This!
Voice This! Newsletter is a collective effort by Millani Jayasingkam, Kritika Yadav, and Elaine Anzaldo. Opinions expressed are solely our own and do not express the views or opinions of our employers.