The Elements of Voice First Style

Chapter 8. The Extra-Conversational Context

A core pillar to building an effective voicebot is the depth of information the designer of the voicebot possesses about the broader context within which the conversation is taking place. The more the designer knows about, or is able to anticipate, this context when they are designing the voicebot, the more effective an experience they can design and deliver.

To differentiate this type of context from the one we covered in Chapter 5, which dealt with the context of a conversation in progress (for instance, who owns the conversational turn, whether the conversation is active or paused), we are calling this context extra-conversational.

Extra-conversational context is information such as: the state of the user, the physical conditions of the conversation, the social context within which the conversation is taking place, the recent context, known individual user patterns from past interactions between a human and the voicebot, and known user-base patterns.

The State of the User

In what follows, we describe six states of the user that a designer should take into consideration when designing a voicebot.

Emotional State

In those scenarios and use cases where we can infer something  about the emotional state of the user (experiencing a power outage, inquiring about lab test results), we design with that emotional state in mind. For instance, if users are likely to be agitated or under some stress, a happy, bouncy voice with a cheerful jingle ...