Agony Agent Roundtable #2

In this episode of Agony Agent, Ben McCulloch welcomes conversation design experts Ilana Meir and Peter Isaacs to tackle pressing issues faced by conversation AI designers. Ilana, a freelance conversation designer with extensive experience in AR, VR, and healthcare, and Peter, a senior conversation design advocate at Voiceflow, share insights on improving bot interactions, overcoming organisational challenges, and leveraging large language models (LLMs). Key topics include how to navigate archaic systems when designing seamless user experiences, managing sentiment analysis in conversation design, and balancing the demands of impulsive sales teams with technical developers. They also discuss the impact of context switching for designers managing multiple brands and the challenges of fine-tuning LLMs for scalable AI solutions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone in the conversational AI industry, offering practical advice on how to combine technical and creative expertise to build better, more human-like interactions. Whether you're refining chatbots or introducing generative AI, you'll find valuable strategies to implement right away. 00:00.0 Intro 04:58.5 Creating beautiful interactions with archaic solutions 11:05.2 Learn sentiment analysis and do emotionally sensitive conversation design 17:19.6 Educating user to speak so the NLU understands 21:17.1 Using LLMs for intent recognition 22:54.1 Meaningful success metrics 27:49.1 Advocating for a holistic view between competing stakeholders 32:38.2 Balancing Gen AI obsession with its abilities 37:30.0 How to build a chatbot that matches ChatGPT 39:19.6 Preparation before building 40:47.1 Think about frameworks where conversations will happen 41:56.6 Finetuning LLMs 44:33.6 Making people see value of CAI and experts 46:17.6 Is chatgpt a good way to show what CAI can do? 47:47.1 CXD for SaaS services with LLM solutions 51:52.1 How to advocate for your role 54:19.6 Context switching multiple brands in a services organisation as a manager 58:24.6 How to go beyond information provided by client when training an assistant Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.