Conversations Squared #7 - Hilary Hayes

Let’s talk careers!

This Conversations2 is an interview with Hilary Hayes, who’s a conversation designer, multimodal interaction designer, teacher and mentor.

I reached out to Hilary in the hope she’d chat about career paths. Why? The job title ‘conversation designer’ is still relatively new, the industry is going through rapid transformation, and recently there were layoffs throughout the tech industry which affected many people, including conversation designers. Sadly, Hilary was one of those designers who got laid-off (she worked at Meta), however as you’ll see in this interview that’s absolutely their loss.

Hilary’s got a lot of insights from her years of experience, she’s not afraid to call out our industry’s issues, and she’s enthusiastic and supportive. I think all conversation designers can take a lot from her. We all wonder about our careers, so listen up for a nice wee chat about careers in conversation design!

00:00 Start

00:13 Introduction

00:51 On UXR 02:18 30 seconds, go!

04:00 The importance of data in conversation design

05:24 Nominate one conversation designer we should all know

07:42 What can designers do away from work to help them be better designers?

14:44 Do conversation designers need lots of life experience?

20:13 On getting certification as a conversation designer

22:11 Talking matters

24:34 What do you need to feel your career is on track?

27:13 We need to talk to each other to stay up to date

31:27 We need to learn from each other

32:17 On mentoring

32:54 UX designers moving into conversation design

35:52 LLMS in conversation design

39:26 AI mirrors us

43:03 Has the industry evolved the way you expected it to?

46:33 Assistants could schedule our lives but they don't yet

48:04 Bots using humans to exploit internet security

50:15 What areas of conversation design don't get enough attention in the industry?

51:22 Are conversational designs serving users well yet?

56:58 What do you hope to do next?

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