VUX World

Tony Lizza, Project Manager at Apollo Matrix, shares his battle scars from working on the technical implementation of the Netflix 13 Reasons Why interactive cinema experience.This was a voice and video experience that was deployed through the mobile web browser and was used to promote Netflix's biggest show, 13 Reasons Why.Dustin Coates and I talk to Tony all about the creation of the experience and the technical challenges Tony and his team faced in implementing something so bleeding-edge, including taking advantage of new APIs that allow developers to access a user's mic and video from within a web browser on mobile and how to handle a lack of that functionality within the walled gardens of social media.We discuss using a fallback touch-based experience, the surprising results of user testing, as well as the technical details of how to do speech to text from within a browser and plenty more.Here's a promo video for the experience that gives you a flavour:13 Reasons Why - Talk to the Reasons - Netflixfrom Moth + Flameon Vimeo.Where to listenApple podcastsSpotifyYouTubeCastBoxSpreakerTuneInBreakerStitcherPlayerFMiHeartRadioLinkswww.talktothereasons.comapollomatrix.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're starting a new feature on VUX World: The Run Down. Dustin Coates and I are getting together each week (or bi-weekly) to discuss the recent happenings in the voice space and how that'll impact designers, developers and brands.Alexa settings APIWe're starting off by discussing the Amazon Alexa feature that developers have been clambering for since 2016: the settings API.With the settings API, you can access the user's timezone (among other things) and use that within your skill to personalise the voice experience for your users. You can send them targeted push notificationsat the appropriate time and use their preferred weather measurement (Celsius or Fahrenheit).We discuss Eric Olsen's (3PO Labs) in-depth review of the settings APIand how it could be the beginning of something bigger.Scott Huffman's 5 insights on voice techWe also discuss Scott Huffman's post (VP Engineering, Google Assistant) on the five insights on voice technologyand how they should impact your approach. For example, focusing on utilities and understanding what kind of things people use Assistant for at different times of day.Voysis and Voicebot vCommerce studyWe delve into the Voysis and Voicebot study on vCommerceand discuss how voice on mobile is so important, yet how it's bubbling away under the surface, not grabbing many headlines.Alexa skills challenge, Storyline and icon creationFinally, we discuss the latest Alexa Skills Challenge: Games, in-skill purchases on Storyline (check out VUX World with Vasili Shynkarenka, CEO, Storyline) and the new Alexa feature that allows anyone to create icons for their skills.Where to listenApple podcastsSpotifyYouTubeCastBoxSpreakerTuneInBreakerStitcherPlayerFMiHeartRadioOther linksThe Power of Habit bookHooked book Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexa Accelerator 2018 featured startup, Voiceitt, gives people with speech impairments their voice back. Today, we're joined by co-founder and VP Strategy, Sara Smolley, to hear all about it.The There are millions of people across the globe who have non-standard speech. People who've had a stroke or who have multiple sclerosis or cerebral pausey, for example. Voiceitt's advanced speech recognition system, which is deployed through an app, allows those people to speak and be understood.Once it's configured, all you do is speak through the app and Voiceitt will do the rest, handling speech to text and displaying the text on-screen whilst a synthetic voice speaks the words to you.For all that's said about voice being accessible, Voiceitt's mission is to open up voice technology to the rest of the world.Our GuestAfter working in Hong Kong and South Korea in marketing and startup consulting, Sara moved to Tel Aviv to help build and establish Voiceitt. Sara travels across the globe working on the strategic side of the business, building relationships, gathering insights and bringing the powerful mission and technology that Voiceitt posses to the world.Where to listenApple podcastsSpotifyYouTubeCastBoxSpreakerTuneInBreakerStitcherPlayerFMiHeartRadioLinkshttp://www.voiceitt.com  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Sauer is a Design Strategist who's worked with some of the world's well known brands: Virgin, Tesco, Pearsons, British Gas, Penguin Random House, BBC. Ben worked with Clearleft as a Design Strategist for many years and more recently turned his attention to how voice will change design.Over the last couple of years, Ben has been focusing on helping brands navigate the voice space and figure out how voice will impact their business, as well as where to start with a voice strategy.Ben joins Dustin and I today to discuss the ins and outs of voice first design strategy, including finding a use case and the differences between voice design strategy and design strategy in general.Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaYouTubeAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksFollow Ben Sauer on TwitterVisit voiceprinciples.comBenSauer.net Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first in a new series called 'Unscripted' where we have off-the-cuff, unscripted conversations with voice first leaders and practitioners to get acquainted, hear their story and find out how they do what they do.In this first episode, we speak to Alexa Skill developing veteran, Nick Schwab, founder of Invoked Apps, about:User adoption of his Ambient Sound skills (his daily usage is huge!)In skill purchasing and his conversation rates (surprising!)Developer rewards and how it all worksHow much it costs to host a successful skillWhy now is the time for Europe to invest heavilyThe discoverability crisis and what's changedFollow Nick Schwab on TwitterCheck out Invoked Apps Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into conversational commerce: what it is, what's possible and how you can turn conversing strangers into paying customers. Our guestCharles Cadbury is the co-founder of Say It Now, a company that helps brands respond the the growing consumer need for immediacy. Charlie's history is impressive. He's seen more than 1,000 client briefs and delivered over 300 digital projects, many of them related to commerce. After working with Lola Tech to create the Dazzle platform, Charlie's attention remains focused on conversational interactions and helping brands convert conversations into commerce. Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaYouTubeAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksCheck out the Say It Now websiteFollow Charles on Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We celebrate the 6 month anniversary of VUX World by reviewing the modev Voice Summit event that took place last week in Newark. We anchor on the Voice Summit to take stock of 2018 and look forward to what brands, designers and developers should be focusing on over the next 6 months.To guide us through #VOICE18, Dustin and I are joined by Tim Kahle and Dominik Meißner, founders of 169 Labs.Win 2 free tickets to the All About Voice conference in Munich on 12th October169 Labs are running a voice first conference of their own on 12th October in Munich: All About Voice.For a chance to win 2 free tickets to the event, just send a tweet using #AllAboutVoice and answer the question: why is 2018 all about voice?169 Labs will pick a random winner who'll receive 2 free tickets to the conference.Use the code VUXWORLD to save 10%.Buy ticketsLinksCheck out the Voice Summit websiteVisit the All About Voice websiteVisit the 169 Labs websiteSee the 169 Labs and Amazon Twitch broadcastSee Tim Kahle's slides from his talkRead Dustin Coates' write up on day 1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re speaking to RAIN agency’s Will Hall and Jason Herndon about how their three pillars of: strategy, creativity and technology, are leading the world's biggest brands to voice first success.In this episode: voice strategy, creative prowess and technological geniusIn this episode, RAIN’s Executive Creative Director, Will Hall, and VP, Engineering, Jason Herndon guide us through the practicalities of how they shape voice strategies and implement voice first solutions for the world's biggest brands.Whether you're a brand, a designer or developer, this episode will help you understand how and where to start.It’ll give you things to consider and help you align voice first initiatives with core business drivers.It’ll show you what you can expect from working with (or at) a voice first agency and give you some examples of how industry-leading brands are approaching voice.It’ll also present some of the challenges you’ll face and maybe even challenge your own thinking on whether your organisation is set-up for success, including showing you why 'systems thinking' is so important.You'll understand how to hone-in on use cases that provide value.You’ll learn how to structure a voice first project; the skills and resources you’ll need and who needs to be involved, as well as the process of going from nothing to implementing a world-leading voice experience.It’ll show you tools that you can use for design and development, as well as guide you on the value of testing early.It’ll also give you some ideas on how far ahead you should plan your roadmap and cover why a crawl, walk, run approach is most appropriate.As ever, we go deep into all of the above and more - this episode is a longer one than usual, and it’s densely packed with nothing but insights.Our guestsWill Hall is the Executive Creative Director at RAIN. Will has worked on countless projects for global brands and blends the strategy and creative sides of projects together, making sure that the strategic aims of clients are brought to fruition with the appropriate creative.Jason Herndon, VP, Engineering at RAIN, has worked with the world's largest brands on technical architecture and development and, at RAIN, is responsible for turning big ideas into reality.About RAINRAIN has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands on some of the most headline grabbing Alexa Skills.Campbells Kitchen and Tide were two of the first branded Alexa Skills and are still cited today as pioneering examples of how valuable voice can be for brands.The Warner Brothers’ Dunkirk interactive story, which we discussed in our episode on voice games with Florian Hollandt, pushed the boundaries on what’s possible on the Alexa platform and brought movie-like sound design and scripting to the voice first world.RAIN help brands big and small figure out the strategic value in bringing voice to your business and guide brands through the creation, implementation, promotion and development of voice first experiences.Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaYouTubeAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksVisit the RAIN.agency website (the newsletter link is at the top on the home page)Check out RAIN's development framework, VoxaGet in touch with RAIN or require about a project: hello@rain.agency Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we speak to conversation design master, Oren Jacob, about what it takes to create successful conversations with technology.There are so many complexities in human conversation. When creating an Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action, most designers try to mimic human conversation. Google itself has taken steps in this direction with the fabricated ‘mm hmm’ moments with Google Duplex.But does all of this have an actual impact on the user experience? Does it make it better or worse? How natural is natural enough and does it matter?What other factors contribute to conversation design that works?PullString CEO and co-founder, Oren Jacob answers all in this week's episode.In this episode on conversation designWe get deep into conversation design this week and discuss things like:How natural should conversations with voice assistants be?Why you shouldn't just try to mimic human conversationThe power of voice and what tools designers need to create compelling personasWhether you should you use the built in text-to-speech (TTS) synthetic voice or record your own dialogueHow any why writing dialogue is entirely different from writing to be readThe similarities and differences between making a film and creating a conversational experience on a voice first deviceThe limitations and opportunities for improved audio capability and sound designThe importance of having an equal balance of creative and technical talent in teamsWhat it all means for brands and why you should start figuring that out nowOur guestOren Jacob, co-founder and CEO of Pullstring. Oren has worked in the space in between creativity and technology for two decades.After spending 20 years working at Pixar on some of the company's classic films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, Oren created ToyTalk.ToyTalk was a company that allowed kids to interact with their toys through voice.As voice technology progressed and voice assistants and smart speakers were shaping up to take the world by storm, ToyTalk morphed into PullString, the enterprise-grade conversation design platform.About PullstringFor over half a decade, PullString's platform, software, and tools have been used to build some of the biggest and best computer conversation in market, with use cases and verticals as diverse as hospitality to home improvement and Hello Barbie to Destiny 2. It was also used to create, the latest in big-ticket skills, HBO 's Westworld: The Maze.Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaYouTubeAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksVisit the PullString webisteFollow PullString on TwitterRead more about how the Westworld skill was createdCheck out the details of the talk Oren will be giving at the VOICE Summit 18Check out the details of Daniel Sinto's demo of PullString Conversehappening at the VOICE Summit 18Check out the VOICE Summit website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Translating your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action is about more than translating the words in your script. It's about translating the user experience. Maaike Dufour calls this 'transcreating' and she joins us this week to show us how it's done.Why should you translate your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action?The world is getting smaller. Technology has enabled us to reach and connect with people from every corner of the earth with ease.Take this podcast for example. It’s listened to in over 40 different countries, most of which don’t speak English as a first language.In fact, the vast majority of the world don’t speak English and certainly not as a first language.Amazon Alexa is globalAmazon Alexa is localised for 11 countries at the time of writing. 5 of them don’t speak English as a first language (France, Germany, Austria, Japan, India).For global brands, having your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action available in every country you do business is a no-brainer. But even for hobbyists and smaller scale developers, think about the population of those countries and the potential impact you could have if you Skill was to do well in those locales.In this episodeWe’re being guided through the importance of making your Alexa Skill or Google Action available in other languages and what steps you should take to make that happen.We discuss why simply translating your Alexa Skill script won’t work and why you need to recreate the user experience in your desired language.We cover some of the cultural differences between countries and give some examples of why that makes literal translations difficult. For example, the X-Factor in the UK is a nationally recognised TV show. Whereas, in France, it aired for one season and wasn’t well received. Therefore, referencing the X-Factor in a French Skill is pointless.Maaike tells us about how, when transcreating your Alexa Skill, you might even need to change your entire persona due to the differences in how other cultures perceive different personas. For example, in the UK, a postman is simply someone who delivers mail. Whereas, in France, the postman is a close family friend who stops to chat and knows everybody in the street personally. In the UK, the postman is a distant stranger. In France, the postman is a close acquaintance. That makes for two entirely different personas.We discuss examples of words and phrases that exist in one language but don’t in another and how that can both open up opportunities and sometimes present challenges.Our guestWe’re joined by Maaike Dufour, Freelance Conversation UX Designer, co-founder of UX My Botand supreme transcreator of voice first applications. Maaike, quite rightly, prefers to use the term ‘transcreate’ instead of ‘translate’ because simply translating the words that make up your Alexa Skill or Google Assistant Action won’t work, as you’ll find out in this episode.Maaike has worked on voice first UX for a number of years. Having worked with the Smartly.aiteam, Maaike now works with Labworks.ioand is helping the team break into international markets through the transcreation of popular Alexa Skills such as Would You Ratherinto other languages.Where to listeniTunes/Apple podcastsSpotifyStitcherTuneIniHeartRadioPippaAny other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on AlexaLinksRead Maaike's thoughts on MediumWatch Maaike's talk at Chatbots and Voice Assistants London on YouTubeFollow Maaike on TwitterCheck out Maaike's websiteVisit UX My Bot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.