Scott Kubie

Do not inject nonsense marketing chatter into your design to make it "more conversational".

Imagine if everywhere you went on a busy day of running errands around town – daycare, the bank, the post office, the grocery store, the auto body shop – every service person you interacted with talked like an overeager weirdo who wants to be your new best friend.

Honor your user's intent. Why did they come to that page? That site? That screen? That's what they care about right then. Focus on that. Making the conversation all about your brand and voice doesn't make you more conversational, it makes you an asshole.

An asshole is someone who demands that social interaction happens on their terms. Assholes say: we're going to talk about what I want to talk about, we're all going to laugh at the jokes I think are funny, and I'm going to do most of the talking. That's a lot of sites these days.

One of the most popular refrains in #UXwriting is "Write like a human!" It's good advice, to a degree. Write like a human, yes, but what kind of human?

Humans can be serious. Direct. Professional. Efficient. No-nonsense. Your interfaces can be those things, too. Think about the most professional, most helpful service experiences you've ever had. I'd bet that high-fives, flattery, and words like "awesomesauce" aren't involved.

I'm making two points in this thread I realize, but they're interlinked: 1) Web interfaces are naturally conversational. You shouldn't add junky, poorly-thought-through chatbot stuff to chase a trend. 2) Being conversational, whatever the medium, is about more than personality.

Using someone's name is critical to the art of conversation, for instance. Most sites fail miserably at this. Many people can't even enter their actual names, nor have them accurately reflected back by the interface, because of sloppy form implementation and archaic policies.

Listening is another critical component of the art of conversation. Your site can "listen" to users by being user-centered. Speak to benefits (to the user) instead of features (of your product). Focus on the user's life and problems, not the history of your company. And so on.

And if you've decided that being/seeming conversational is important, for the love of God don't interrupt your users with pop-up nonsense. Really good waiters have a knack for approaching the table at just the right moment without breaking the conversation.

Remember that tone is all about context. It's tone OF voice IN a given situation/context. It's not one new word, voiceandtone, as a synonym for brand. Effective tone is appropriate to the circumstances.

I've seen many of these voiceandtone guides (gesundheit!) that are little more than aspirational descriptions of a brand personality, and have no useful guidance on situation-appropriate, user-centered communication.

So a pedantic little shit and good friend (hi @mjmetts) points out that Conversational User Interface (CUI) is a specific concept. Good, yes. For most users (though not all) a website is a GUI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_user_interfaces … (1/2)

I don't mean to say your website is a CUI. I do mean to say that your website is a conversation between you and your users. CUI or GUI or VUI, your interface is primarily processed by the user as a conversation. That conversation exists whether you mindfully design it or not. 2/2

People are slapping CUI (think chatbot) interfaces on top of their existing web GUIs because the conversational part of their website sucks. They aren't being good conversationalists, aren't listening, and users are lost and frustrated and confused.

Prioritizing CUI and VUI interface models over GUI models isn't going to magically improve the conversation between you and your users.