UX Cambridge 2018 Recap

Design for voice is on the horizon — better start looking out

UX Cambridge is a practical UX Conference aimed at professionals in the fields of design, technology, and management that’s been happening regularly for many years now. When I first came across the event last year I was instantly intrigued by the professional setup and organization, as well as all the great reviews about last years line up and the good vibes. I instantly knew I wanted to be a part of this. I was all the more excited when I got accepted to give a talk at the event and then eventually made my way to the island.

When I arrived at the conference site I was stunned by the historic places all around. It truly feels like being inside a Harry Potter movie.

From then on the event, at least the sessions I chose, turned out consistently strong. The line up of international speakers from all over the world delivered knowledge and fostered discussions and exchange like I haven’t seen in a conference before. Here are just some of my very favorite sessions in chronological order:

Representing USEEDS°, a UX focused digital agency from Berlin, I came to Cambridge to share our experience, challenges, and learnings on designing voice-based interfaces. Over the past two years, we at USEEDS° were lucky enough to gain some experience here by working on voice projects within a variety of industries and applications.

When the technology works well enough, voice interaction wins due to its unmatched efficiency and accessibility over any other current mode of input. At that point, it becomes but another design problem, not unlike the ways of designing we’ve grown used to and honed our skills in.

Adding voice to your repertoire as a designer will eventually be critical. It represents the next logical step on the way to the ultimate responsive design. The content or functionality you’re providing has to work under all circumstances, in any medium, and in the way the user wants to access and interact with in any given moment. Adaptability is key, even if that means we need to change our thinking on what design means.

To many designers who are used to designing for screens, this can seem alienating and complicated from the distance. That is why we wanted to share some of our learnings and eventually ease the transition for anyone open to broaden their skill portfolio by a new medium. To achieve this future we deem ultimately desirable, we need to spread the skills and have the design community as a whole embrace designing for this new medium. After all, no one can do this alone.

Having recognized the potential of voice computing early on, we at USEEDS° dove right in. Over the past year or two, we were lucky enough to work on multiple voice projects ranging from apps set on top of popular voice assistant platforms up to completely custom voice assistants and conversational interfaces in phone calls.

What’s key to developing solid and helpful voice user interfaces shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It’s the same relentless focus on people and a solid design process as with any people facing product. Only when you understand who is using your product, what they need from it, how they expect it to work, what situation they are in, you can start to figure out how you should build it.

That’s the way we approach every project here at USEEDS°. This understanding, that you don’t have to — and can’t — know the answer from the get-go, made us confident in our decision to go after the seemingly unchartered territory that is voice design. It was the right decision.

This is the same realization that helps us achieve excellence in any project. There is no feeling of “we have worked in finance before, so this will be easy”, because every new project has its unique challenges. There’s new stakeholders, new strategy, new users with new skills or new prior knowledge.

Letting go of preemptive assumptions and embracing the unknown not only get’s you the right results, but it also lets you take on any challenge in any industry. This has proven true over and over again and allowed us to tackle challenges in everything from finance and insurance, to mobility, VR and now voice.

I hope that I was able to share both, our insights into voice design and also a more generalist approach to any type of design, with the audience at UX Cambridge. But on top of all, I’m thankful that I was able to participate in making this event the success it turned out to be.

As a closing note, for me, this was actually the very best thing about UX Cambridge. I met so many interesting people, heard about problems, ideas, initiatives, and solutions. And made some great new friends.

After all, it’s all about the people!

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