Rebecca Evanhoe Rebecca Evanhoe practices, teaches, and writes about conversation design, a key UX practice that is taking on fresh importance in the age of chat-based AI applications. Since the publication of her book Conversations with Things (co-authored with Diana Deibel) three years ago, the tech and media worlds have fundamentally transformed, but the conversation-design principles that she teaches remain as relevant as ever. We talked about: the conversation design and UX writing courses she teaches reflections on the book she co-wrote several years ago, "Conversations with Things" and the changes in the conversation-design world since how the focus on principles in a framewwork set out in their book that helps designers decide on whether or not and how to ascribe personality to a chat agent her identification as a UX designer how she's incorporating LLMs into her course curricula her take on the misappropriation of the term "prompt" in new practices called "prompting" and "prompt engineering" and their divergence from traditional use in the conversation design field the differences in the conversation designer role in the LLM world compared with NLP the linguistic concept of "conversation repair" and how it manifests in "bot land" how to adjust confidence level in conversation design how intent classification in NLU works her preference for humans and human conversation the importance of including people with a humanities background in conversation design the ongoing importance of humans in the content and conversation design process for our ability to think strategically about how to maximize the success of conversational technology Rebecca's bio Rebecca Evanhoe is an author, teacher, and conversation designer. With degrees in chemistry and fiction writing, she's passionate about how interdisciplinary thinking can combine arts, humanities, sciences, and tech. She teaches conversational UX design as a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute, and co-authored Conversation with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice (Rosenfeld Media, 2021). Connect with Rebecca online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/xJkB03uH8ek Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 19. We're all talking to computers a lot more these days - telling Alexa to set a timer, asking Midjourney to create an image for a party invitation, or prompting ChatGPT to draft an outline for a slide deck. Rebecca Evanhoe is an expert on the interaction design practices that guide these conversations. Three years ago, her book "Conversations with Things" set out a principles-based approach to conversation design that remains super-relevant in the age of large language models. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 19 of the Content and AI podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show Rebecca Evanhoe. Rebecca is really well known in the conversation design world. She's a conversation designer. She's the co-author of the really excellent book Conversations with Things that came out a few years ago, and she teaches conversation design and other kinds of design work at Pratt University in New York. So welcome to the show, Rebecca, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Rebecca: Yeah, hi Larry, it's nice to be back. Yeah, these days I am teaching, I think you said conversation design, and specifically this semester I'm teaching a class in UX writing, which I love because it doesn't matter what kind of writing I'm teaching, it's like a chance to think about language and celebrate how cool language is with my students. And yeah, I've been teaching, I am doing some work at a cool place that I won't get into here. But yeah, it's been a really interesting couple of years. Larry: Yeah, because we last talked right before your book came out,

Andy Crestodina discusses how AI enhances content quality at Orbit Media, focusing on audience research, persona development, and gap analysis. He emphasizes quality over quantity, efficient prompt management, and effective collaboration with AI tools in marketing content creation.

Markus Edgar Hormess Markus Edgar Hormess offers this advice: "Never prompt alone." Markus was working with AI long before the current wave of excitement. He experimented with early versions of ChatGPT and quickly identified new opportunities to collaborate with both his human colleagues and his new AI coworkers. He's currently building a community - Teaming with AI - to study and share these new practices and to explore the future of teamwork in the age of AI. We talked about: his background in strategic prototyping and how he's applying it in his Teaming with AI initiative his first exploration of AI, in 1986 one his first applications of current AI tech, a use of ChatGPT-2 to accelerate service design prototyping activities his work and experimentation on ways to engage AI tools as collaborators on design teams how to consume research on AI, but also the importance of getting out in the field since research develops more slowly than professional craft his insight that you should "never prompt alone" so that you and your collaborators can eliminate bias and get better answers some of the opportunities that AI creates for real-time research and accelerated implementation of research insights how important it is "to put people in the center of this" the benefits for design practitioners of diving in and experimenting with AI tools, always with collaborators Markus's bio Markus Edgar Hormeß is a well-known consultant, practitioner and educator in the field of service design and design thinking. In his daily work, Markus helps organizations tackle complex business problems and make team cultures more agile and human-centered. The focal point of his work is strategic prototyping, where he constantly pushes the boundaries of what a dedicated team can achieve with limited resources. Markus is a strong believer that we should break down the perceived boundaries between technology, design and business – and that cheap experiments and prototypes are efficient tools to move your company, your strategy, your team, or your project forward. Based on this mindset, he has shaped multi-year programmes to help multinationals shift towards a more hands-on, pragmatic and effective approach to customer experience and innovation. Markus has a passion for good design, human technology, practical experiments, authentic services, and playfulness in all things. He is co-Founder of WorkPlayExperience, a service innovation consultancy which helps organizations worldwide change how their staff, partners, and customers work together – and – how they can strategically discover and create new products and services. His practice builds on his experience of service design and business consulting, and on his background in theoretical physics. In 2010, Markus co-initiated the world’s biggest service innovation event: the award-winning Global Service Jam. This was soon followed by the Global Sustainability Jam and the Global GovJam, and Markus has been a leading figure in establishing the culture of experimentation and prototyping which Jammers worldwide call “DoingNotTalking”. Markus co-wrote “This is Service Design Doing” and “This is Service Design Methods”, top-selling books which have become the standard reference books for many practitioners and academics. He teaches service design, innovation, and sustainability at various universities globally, and is adjunct professor for service design thinking at IE Business School in Madrid. In 2023 he co-initiated the Teaming with AI conference and community. His growing interest centers on how AI influences our approach to teamwork and collaboration, as well as the broader impacts on innovation and the development of strategies that are resilient in the face of future challenges.. Connect with Markus online LinkedIn Teaming with AI website Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/HlHhpsr2lW4

Dan Porder A few years ago, Dan Porder was teaching poetry to university students. Now he's at IKEA training large language models to generate useful, usable content for user experiences. He's picked up new skills along the way, like Python programming, but much of his work still relies on well-established content and design crafts like content strategy and inclusive design. We talked about: his role as a senior content designer at IKEA, where he focuses on AI some of his early experiments in composing and evaluating poetry his longstanding interest in AI and the development of his tech skills how content designers can leverage their skills to work in AI his perception that there is currently more opportunity than threat to content professionals in the AI world the make-up of the cross-functional teams he works with: data scientists, engineers, developers, content people, designers, subject matter experts how to brief and guide generative AI to get the outputs your users need how writing abilities prepare content designers to do prompt engineering the stack of data and technology that underlies AI and the orchestration mechanisms that connect them some of the tools he uses in his AI design practice the role of data in content design for generative AI the importance of staying aware of bias in training data and always wearing your inclusive design hat the role of explainability in AI ethics the importance of knowing how to ask data scientists and engineers questions that reveal as much as possible the inner workings of the "black box" in which AI content is generated his take on democratization opportunities that arise with the arrival of AI tech Dan's bio Dan Porder is a Senior Content Designer and Content Engineer at IKEA. His recent work focuses on the intersection of AI, structured knowledge, and experience design. Outside of work, he runs an international writing community. Connect with Dan online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/VFXLG4h6ylE Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 16. AI is quickly changing the way content designers work. New content duties are emerging that require fresh skills, but at the same time traditional skills like content strategy are becoming more important. In his work as a content designer at IKEA, Dan Porder has developed new skills, like Python programming, and has applied the writing skills he perfected as a poetry teacher as well as the inclusive design practices he developed earlier in his content design career. Interview transcript Larry: Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number 16 of the Content and AI podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show Dan Porder. Dan is a senior content designer at IKEA, where he's currently focusing on AI stuff, and his title is content designer, but he is really more of a content architect. So welcome to the show, Dan. Tell me a little bit more about your AI and content adventures. Dan: Hey Larry. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, maybe I could just start by giving a little bit of background. I think at heart, despite what I'm doing now, I think of myself as a writer, and that's been my life's focus since I was young. Writing poetry, writing fiction. I did my bachelor's in English literature and later did a masters, masters of fine arts, actually, in poetry. Some of it was more on a conceptual side, thinking of language as data. So there was some unusual experiments in the tech world even then for me. Using Google data to create poems. So imagining Google queries as a representation of the collective zeitgeist, and how can we leverage that data to create meaning in poetry? Or using NLP to find meaningful relationships in texts where you didn't know they were there. But all of that then led me into copywriting, so like brand copywriting, product copywriting, ads,

Rebecca Nguyen In her work as a content designer at Indeed.com, Rebecca Nguyen is finding new opportunities to assume a leadership role on teams working with generative AI. Rebecca feels fortunate to work with teams that recognize the value of writing and design skills. She's also finding that generative AI is the perfect place for content design to take the lead. We talked about: her work as a senior UX content designer at Indeed and her recent shift to focus on product teams using generative AI how well-suited content designers are to AI products the unique challenges of working with non-deterministic large language models their process for designing prompts and how they evaluate them her learning curve around the loss of some language control that you get in conventional content design the main differences between prompt engineering (the how) and content design (the what) her ability as a content designer to lead more in the AI space than in prior design roles how they balance the use of outsourced LLM solutions like OpenAI versus developing their own models the lack of genuine intelligence in LLMs how her fear and concern about AI is eased the more she works in the LLM world how the evaluation component of designing content for AI creates more work for content folks one of the main benefits of LLMs - their ability to take on tedious rote content work the child-like nature of LLMs the surprising liberating effects of simply not worrying about whether or not you have a seat at the proverbial table Rebecca's bio Rebecca Nguyen (she/her/hers) is a Senior UX Content Designer at Indeed. She’s been part of marketing, UX, and product design teams at Bankrate, Northwestern Mutual, and LPL Financial, where she established the content strategy practice. A Confab speaker and workshop instructor, Rebecca is also an award-winning memoirist. Connect with Rebecca online LinkedIn RebeccaAnneNguyen.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/8WnxlXXKxeY Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 15. Just as content design was emerging as its own craft and profession, along came generative AI. At first it looked like ChatGPT and large language models might displace content designers (unfortunately, it appears from recent layoffs that some executives may still think this is the case), but at Indeed.com, Rebecca Nguyen has found that working with LLMs has given her more work, not less, and that her content design efforts are now more interesting, rewarding, and impactful. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 15 of the Content + AI podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show Rebecca Nguygen. Rebecca is a senior UX content designer at Indeed. Welcome, Rebecca. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you do at Indeed. Rebecca: Hey, thank you so much, Larry. Great to be here. Yeah, I'm a senior UX content designer at Indeed. I've been there for a couple of years now, going on two years, and I work on product teams to make sure their content is useful and useful and accessible and inclusive and all those goodies that we're used to. And in the past six months or so, my role has really shifted and I've been almost exclusively focused on working with product teams who are using generative AI in their products. Larry: And that's why I wanted to have you on the show is we talked about this a while back. And that's one way to think... One way I think about that is all of a sudden we have new collaborators in two senses. One, we have these new, we're talking to machines in our work because they're generating some of the language we work with, but there's also a lot of other new collaborators. Tell me a little bit about how the people around you have changed over the last six months. Rebecca: Yeah, that's such a great point. So we're probably,

May Habib May Habib is the CEO at Writer.com, a generative-AI platform that has been helping enterprises use AI since 2020. Her company builds its own award-winning large language models and is pioneering approaches like "headless AI" to help employees across an enterprise use AI to be more creative and productive. We talked about: her work as CEO at Writer.com, a "full-stack generative-AI platform," for the past four years her decade-long work in the AI and NLP space, beginning with translation solutions her take on the "over-chat-ification" of AI products, the reliance on chat interfaces as opposed to other ways to access AI capabilities her prediction that 2024 will the "get real" year for AI the use of fine-tuning and/or RAG to connect learning models the inadequacies of vector databases for knowledge retrieval and their exploration of knowledge graphs to fill the gap a new role, the "AI ontologist" another new role, the "AI program director" which includes a mix of left- and right-brain thinking and technical skills some of the use cases for "headless" AI their approach to securing and protecting the various kinds of data used in their LLM how she sees the role of data scientists in AI their tactical approach to building knowledge graphs for specific business use cases their work at Writer on no-code and low-code tooling to help their customers build solutions and tooling on the platform new content job roles that are emerging as AI takes hold in enterprises May's bio May Habib is CEO and co-founder of Writer, the only fully-integrated generative AI platform built for enterprises. Leading companies, including Vanguard, Intuit, L’Oreal, Accenture, Spotify, Uber, and more, choose Writer to help them deploy generative AI across their businesses, allowing them to automate and augment key operational activities and increase employee creativity and productivity. Writer’s family of large language models (LLMs) are state-of-the-art, topping leaderboards for natural language understanding and generation. The company’s security-first approach means that Writer’s large language models and generative AI platform are deployed inside an enterprise’s own computing infrastructure. Launched in 2020, Writer has seen immense success with customer adoption, has grown revenues by 10x in the last two years, and has over 150% net revenue retention. May and the Writer team have successfully raised over $126M in funding from notable investors, including ICONIQ Growth, Balderton Capital, and Insight Partners. May began her entrepreneurial journey as a teenager, and founded her first language startup, Qordoba, a localization software company, 10 years ago. May is an expert in AI-driven language generation, AI-related organizational change, and the evolving ways we use language online. She has been recognized for many different awards, including the recent 2023 Forbes AI 50 and Inc.'s 2023 Female Founder Award. She is a MELI Fellow with the Aspen Institute. She graduated from Harvard University and spends her time between San Francisco, where Writer is based, and London, where her two children live. Connect with May online LinkedIn email may at writer dot com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/lFTfA4X8CkA Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 14. Over the past year and a half, innovative artificial intelligence startups have taken the tech and content worlds by storm. In her position as the CEO of the generative AI platfom Writer.com, May Habib has been right in the middle of the excitement, and out in front of it. Writer and their clients were deploying LLM-driven generative AI programs inside of large enterprises long before OpenAI's ChatGPT 3 captured the headlines and launched the current wave of AI disruption. Interview transcript Larry: Hey everyone.

Laura Costantino, a content designer at Google, shares insights on training Large Language Models (LLMs) and navigating the challenges of designing content at scale. She discusses the importance of collaboration, adapting design systems for AI integration, and embracing new technologies with a proactive and curious approach.

Chris Cameron At Booking.com, they've been helping travelers with their trip planning for many years. The arrival of generative AI has given them new ways to help travelers with this business-critical task. Over the past year, Chris Cameron has applied his UX writing and content strategy skills in ways both familiar and new to help build a new AI-powered Trip Planner tool that integrates with Booking.com's travel-booking app. We talked about: his work as a principal UX writer at Booking.com on their "writing system," which is sort of like their version of a design system for UX writers his recruitment to a "tiger team" at Booking to develop a new travel-planning AI chatbot for their travel-booking app the key differences between his prior product work and his work on this AI product the new kinds of collaboration that have arisen in his work on a generative AI product, in particular his work with machine-learning engineers the transition from the prototype of the app to its current position as an established product the product-feedback mechanisms that are built into the Booking "Trip Planner" how to jump start your learning if you're new to working on generative-AI tools how they were able to leverage components in their current design system to build the new Trip Planner app the prompt engineering skills he developed by creating an AI "story robot" for his three-year-old son his optimism about the employment prospects for UX writers how traditional content strategy practices like establishing voice and tone and consistent terminology manifest in AI product design how new AI practices are just as likely to show up as enterprise productivity improvements as in customer-facing products and features Chris's bio Chris Cameron has over 13 years of professional writing experience across journalism, marketing, and UX. As a Principal UX Writer at Booking.com, Chris oversees UX Writing Systems, managing the tools and workflows that enable over 80 UX writers to efficiently create high-quality content localised into over 45 languages and dialects. Born in Boston and raised in Phoenix, Chris now lives in Amsterdam with his wife and son. Connect with Chris online LinkedIn Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/bptOvimY4uU Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 11. As generative-AI tools are introduced into consumer products and enterprise workflows, the core work of content designers and UX writers still feels familiar, but the context for the work and many of its details are evolving. Over the past year, at Booking.com, where he has been working on an AI-powered travel-planning app, Chris Cameron has seen first-hand how the traditional concerns of content strategy and UX writing manifest in the world of generative AI. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode #11 of the Content + AI Podcast. I'm really happy today to welcome to the show Chris Cameron. Chris is a principal UX writer at Booking.com, the big travel booking agency based in Amsterdam. Welcome to the show, Chris. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you do there at Booking. Chris: Well, thanks, Larry, for having me. Yeah, I'll give a bit of my background as well. Like yourself, I started in journalism and then got into copywriting. And after moving to Amsterdam from the US at a very young age, 25, I guess, I eventually joined Booking in 2016, a little over seven years ago. And back then, the role was actually called copywriting. There was about 25 of us. And over the years we sort of discovered that we were actually UX writers, and we've become now this community of over 80 UX writers. And now, I am a principal UX writer, and the area I look after we call writing systems. And what that is is sort of like the writing version of design systems, but it's not so much a system,

Lance Cummings discusses AI content operations, structured content, and the impact of technology on content creation. Topics include collaborative prompting, value in community interactions, and how structured content can enhance creativity. The podcast explores the integration of AI in workflows, authenticity in the creator economy, and the creative potential of AI in content development.

Dave Birss (AI-generated) Dave Birss has had a busy 2023. Since developing his first AI course for LinkedIn Learning early in the year, he has produced five more courses and has become the learning platform's most popular AI instructor. We talked about: his experimental approach to teaching AI how he helps companies understand the true benefits of AI the importance of using AI to augment people's skills rather than just to try and save money the elements of his AI manifesto use AI responsibly be ethical support your employees assign leaders keep learning always add a human layer to AI output the importance of critically consuming advice from anyone who proclaims to be an AI expert the importance of companies learning for themselves because there are few reliable consultants available now how unlocking the true benefits of AI can change companies' perspectives and help them see new opportunities the crucial task of understanding people and addressing their needs as AI is adopted his observation that it "cannot be AI or human, which is the way that a lot of companies are seeing it, it's got to be AI plus human" how the adoption of AI supports his point of view that generalists have an equally important role in the modern workforce as specialists Dave's bio Dave Birss combines the analytical mind of an AI geek with the butterfly mind of a former advertising creative director. This helps him make the ever-changing world of AI approachable, relevant, and occasionally entertaining. At the start of 2023, he launched his first LinkedIn Learning course on Generative AI. Since then, he’s released another five courses, all of which have gained fantastic ratings and reviews. In July LinkedIn announced that he’s now the most popoular AI instructor on the platform. But Dave isn’t just about online courses. He’s also a globe-trotting educator and public speaker, helping companies and individuals get more value out of Generative AI. He’s also a best-selling author with several books on creativity and innovation. And a former broadcaster and film-maker. As a sought-after keynote speaker, Dave speaks about AI, innovation, and creative thinking with a blend of science and dad-jokes. He’s a Scotsman who lives in London with his Haitian-American wife and two delightfully confused children. Connect with Dave online LinkedIn DaveBirss.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/2QL01qN6uzY Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 9. Over the past year, we've all been getting up to speed on AI. Over that time span, Dave Birss has become the most popular AI instructor on LinkedIn Learning. Dave would be the first to tell you that he's not an expert on artificial intelligence. But he's a very experienced technology professional who has witnessed several major earlier tech revolutions, and he's an experienced teacher and consultant, so he brings a very pragmatic approach to incorporating AI in your work life. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number nine of the Content and AI podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Dave Birss. Dave is an educator, author, and consultant currently focusing on AI and AI education. He's the most popular AI instructor at LinkedIn Learning. Welcome, Dave. It's great to have you here. Tell the folks a little bit more about what's going on these days. Dave: Thanks, Larry. Yeah, I've been creating courses on AI this year, really. And I can't really call myself an AI expert. I guess I'm an enthusiast and I am an experimenter. I guess I do research to find out what works best, and then I share that knowledge with people. Dave: If you told me a year ago that I was going to be doing AI as my main thing, I wouldn't have believed you because OpenAI only released ChatGPT on,