Technology
**VUX World**

Interviews with the best brains in AI, sharing how to improve customer experience and business operations using emerging AI technologies such as voice AI, conversational AI, NLP, Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI and more.

We educate business leaders and teams on why and how AI technologies are revolutionising the way consumers engage with businesses and the internet, why that matters and how to implement it properly.

*“One of the most consistently insightful and deeply respected podcasts in the industry”*

*Bradley Metrock, Score Publishing*

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Latest Episodes:

All about Alpha Voice with Bryan Colligan Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

This week, we’re finding out how content creators can have their podcasts and YouTube content indexed and searchable on voice, with Bryan Colligan of Alpha Voice.

With the podcast industry thriving and more people listening to podcasts than ever, more brands are starting to launch their own podcasts. Podcasts are a perfect fit for devices like the Echo and Google Home because they provide ambient entertainment, similar to the widely popular relaxation sounds skills.

Two problems face podcast and content creators: how do you make your podcast discoverable in the first place and how do you allow people to search through your backlog of episodes in order to find something that interests them?

Podcast discoverability is almost as much of a problem as Alexa Skill discoverability. Although Google is beginning to do its bitto help podcasts be discovered online, what about on voice?

This is the problem Alpha Voice aims to solve.

Help others get their skill passed first time by sharing your skill certification stories: Send us your tipsand you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefingthis week!

What is Alpha Voice?

Alpha Voiceindexes your podcast or YouTube content and makes it all searchable on Alexa via your own Alexa Skill.

And it’s not just the podcast titles and guests you can search for. You can search for anything at all that interests you and the platform will search within your content to find your search term, then recommend that episode for you to listen to.

In this episode

We’re talking to Alpha Voice co-founder, Bryan Colligan, about how the platform works, how he and his co-founder built it and what value it gives content creators.

We also get into detail about how the VUX of search works on voice: processing and serving potentially hundreds of search results. How do you determine which ones to display to the user?

We also discuss:

The 5 ways to monetise content
Skill certification inconsistencies, including censorship and 'unwritten rules’
How you can get up and running with Alpha Voice

We wrap up by telling you all about the VUX World Alexa Skill, built using Alpha Voice! (U.S. only right now but will be available in EU soon.)

Our guest

Bryan Colligan is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Alpha Voice. Bryan is based in Silicon Valley, has founded a series of startups and has been helping startups create mobile apps and improve their SEO for the last 10 years.

After reading the Mary Meeker internet trends report and learning that Google can understand 96% of what humans say, Bryan has turned his attention to the voice-first world.

After a number of failed experiments, he stumbled across the idea for Alpha Voice and is now helping content creators have their content found on Alexa.

Where to listen

iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play VUX World on Alexa

Links

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Voice analytics and Dashbot with Arte Merritt Jun 04, 2018

Show notes

This week, we’re getting deep into voice analytics and will help you learn more about how you can understand the performance of your voice first experience.

One of the biggest benefits that technology has given us is the ability to understand. To understand whether our latest PPC campaign had an impact on sales. To understand whether our new website increased our leads. To understand whether our pricing tweak made a difference on click through rates. To understand whether our foray into Facebook is sending more traffic. To understand whether our customers are satisfied.

Tools such as Google Analytics have been providing this kind of value to website owners for years. Tracking where your users come from (Google, Facebook etc), what they do when they arrive and whether they convert are the cornerstones of understanding website performance.

What about voice analytics?

With the introduction of new mediums such as conversational chatbots and voice first applications on platforms such as Alexa and GoogleAssistant, how do you understand the performance of these things?

How do you know if your Alexa Skill or Google Action is successful? Send us your answersand you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefingthis week!

Can you apply the same rules as the web? Can you even access the same data? Is there some new metrics that matter more? And how can you use all of this to understand and improve the performance and use of your product?

Well, that’s what you’re about to find out.

In this episode

We’re speaking to Dashbot.ioCEO Arte Merritt all about the conversational analytics platform and how you can understand whether your conversational experience is working for your users.

We discuss the kind of metrics Dashbot provide including:

No. users
Repeat users
Time per session
Retention
Sentiment analysis
Message funnels
Intent funnels
Top exit messages
AI performance
Goals
Behaviour flow
Conversation flow

Arte tells us some case studies of how the tool has been used to understand and then improve conversational experiences.

We discuss some of the challenges with conversational analytics and how they relate to the voice first space and we hear about where voice analytics are heading in the future.

Our guest

Arte Merritt has worked in mobile and analytics for 20 years. He built an analytics platform which he sold it to Nokia before turning his attention to fill a gap in the market when he realised that Slack didn’t have any analytics. Dashbot was born and its been serving conversational designers ever since, helping them understand and improve their chatbots and voice applications. Since its creation, Dashbot has analysed 32 billion messages and counting!

Where to listen

iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play V.U.X. World on Alexa

Links

Check out Dashbot.io
Follow Dashbot on Twitter
Follow Arte on Twitter
Alexa Skills: competitive intelligence
Check out the Dashbot Blog
Find out more about the Smart Voice Summit London

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**All about Pindrop, VUI design and VUI tuning with Simonie Wilson** May 28, 2018
Show notes

This week, we take a look at the similarities between VUI design for IVR and VUI design for voice assistants. We also explain what VUI tuning is and why it’s important, whilst giving you some tips on how you can tune your voice user interface. We also discuss PinDrop and voice first security.

In this episode
We speak to one of the world’s expert VUI practitioners, Simonie Wilson, to get under the hood of Passport and figure out what it is, how it works, why it’s needed and how you can use it to authenticate users with confidence whilst preventing fraud.
We also tap into Simonie’s vast VUI design experience and discuss how she goes about designing VUIs that delight rather than smite customers. We get into detail about the benefits of VUI tuning and Simonie shares her advice on how you can continuously improve a VUI experience.
Are brands failing on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant? Send us your answers and you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefing this week!
Privacy and security
Privacy is often cited as a barrier and a challenge in the voice first space. How do you authenticate a user, build trust and enable people to transact in a frictionless way, all without a long, drawn out, failure stricken on-boarding process?
PinDrop is changing that with it’s product, Passport: a fool-proof way to recognise whether someone is who they say they are simply by the sound of their voice. It works in all voice first areas and can even tell whether the voice is synthetic.
Here's an example of it working with Alexa:

There is so much potential in the voice first space from a vcommerce, health and financial management perspective that technology such as this could smooth over the cracks in the verification process and enable people to transact more seamlessly in a voice first world.

Our Guest
Simonie Wilson is the queen of VUI design. With over 20 years experience working in the speech and VUI design space, Simonie's career has included working with large companies such as Microsoft and GM, small companies such as startups and contracting too. Simonie has knowledge and experience in the VUI design space that few others do and is one of the few people to have extensive experience with VUI tuning.
Simonie is madly passionate about VUI design and, in this episode, shares all of that passion and some real lessons and insights from her experience that’ll help all VUI designers improve what they do.

Where to listen
iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play V.U.X. World on Alexa
Links
Visit the PinDrop website
Check out PinDrop on YouTube
PinDrop on Facebook
PinDrop on Twitter
Connect with Simonie on LinkedIn
Email Simonie
Read about PinDrop Passport in Forbes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**All about BotTalk and how to run a voice first discovery workshop with Andrey Esaulov** May 21, 2018
Show notes

This week, we’re digging into how you can create an Alexa Skill using BotTalk and we give you a template for running a voice first discovery workshop, with SmartHaus Technologies CEO and BotTalk co-founder, Andrey Esaulov.
We discuss the importance of starting with a solid use case and how imperative it is to base your voice app on a real-world scenario that’ll add value to your users.
What turns an average voice experience into an EPIC voice experience? Send us your answers and you could feature on the VUX World Flash Briefing this week!
We then dive deep into the practical detail of how to approach designing a voice first user experience with BotTalk and find out more about the language it’s built in: YAML. We discuss what BotTalk is, how it’s different from some of the other tools on the market, how it works, it’s features and how you can get up and running.
Finally, Andrey takes us through a voice first discovery workshop template that he uses with clients in order to take a brand from zero to hero: from ideation to prototype, and how you can do the same too.
We also traverse some other interesting conversational landscapes such as the concept of skill-first companies: brands that pop up as skills which are the core of the business, like an app is for Instagram. We chat about Artificial Intelligence and how intelligent it actually is in the voice first space. We touch on managing client expectations, monetisation and how voice is making waves in Germany.

About BotTalk
The current selection skill building tools on the market are at opposite ends of the technical spectrum. Some tools require you to know how to code from the ground-up, like Jovo and be a skilled back-end developer. Others have a drag and drop interface and don’t require any coding at all, like Storyline.
BotTalk bridges the gap between those two worlds with a tool that’s aimed at UX designers who have some basic coding knowledge, like HTML and CSS. It provides some of the technical capability you’d expect if you built something from scratch, whilst providing a more simple coding language: YAML. Think of it as HTML for voice.

Our Guest
Andrey Esaulov is the CEO of SmartHaus Technologies, which specialise in growth hacking in the mobile space, and the co-founder of BotTalk, a voice first and bot application building platform.
Andrey has a computer science background, with expensive experience in the start up world and mobile growth space, as well as a PhD in Linguistics and Literacy.
Andrey’s skillset is a perfect match for this industry and his knowledge in this area is vast. Couple his computer science and linguistics knowledge with his skills in working with clients and delivering growth and you’ve got a perfect recipe for success.

Links
Check out BotTalk
Follow Andrey on Twitter
Join the BotTalk Facebook community
Follow BotTalk on Insta
Watch the BotTalk tutorials on YouTube
Visit the Smarthaus Technologies website
Join the Alexa Slack channel
Enable the VUX World Flash Briefing
Feature on this week's Flash Briefing
Where to listen
iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play V.U.X. World on Alexa

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All about Voysis and the GUI to VUI transition with Brian Colcord May 07, 2018

Show notes

We’ve covered plenty of voice first designand developmenton this podcast. Well, that’s what the podcast is, so we’re bound to! Most of what we’ve discussed has largely been voice assistant or smart speaker-focused. We haven’t covered a huge amount of voice first application in the browser and on mobile, until now.

Mic check

You’ll have noticed the little mic symbol popping up on a number of websites lately. It’s in the Google search bar, it’s on websites such as EchoSim and Spotify are trialing it too. When you press that mic symbol, it enables your mic on whatever device you’re using and lets you speak your search term.

Next time you see that mic, you could be looking at the entry point to Voysis.

On a lot of websites, that search may well just use the website’s standard search tool to perform the search. With

Voysis, its engine will perform the search for you using its voice tech stack.

That means that you can perform more elaborate searches that most search engines would struggle with. For example:

“Show me Nike Air Max trainers, size 8, in black, under $150”

Most search engines would freak out at this, but not Voysis. That’s what it does.

Of course, it’s more than an ecommerce search tool, as we’ll find out during this episode.

In this episode

We discuss how approaches to new technology seem to wrongly follow a reincarnation route. Turning print into web by using the same principles that govern print. Turning online into mobile by using the same principles that govern the web. Then taking the practices and principles of GUI and transferring that to VUI. We touch on why moving you app to voice is the wrong approach.

We also discuss:

Voysis - what it is and what it does
Getting sophisticated with searches
Designing purely for voice vs multi modal
The challenge of ecommerce with a zero UI
The nuance between the GUI assistant and voice only assistants
How multi modal voice experiences can help the shopping experience
Making the transition from GUI to VUI
The similarities between moving from web to mobile and from mobile to voice - (when moving to mobile, you had to think about gestures and smaller screens)
Error states and points of delight
The difference between designing for voice and designing for a screen
Testing for voice
Understand voice first ergonomics

Our Guest

Brian Colcord, VP of Design at Voysis, is a world-leading designer, cool, calm and collected speaker and passionate sneaker head.

After designing the early versions of the JoinMe brand markings and UI, he was recruited by LogMeIn and went on to be one of the first designers to work on the Apple Watch prior to its release.

Brian has made the transition from GUI to VUI design and shares with us his passion for voice, how he made the transition, what he learned and how you can do it too.

About Voysis

Voysis is a Dublin-based voice technology company that believes voice interactions can be as natural as human ones and are working intently to give brands the capability to have natural language interactions with customers.

Links

Check out the Voysis website

Follow Voysis on Twitter

Read the Voysis blog

Join Brian on LinkedIn

Follow Brian on Twitter

Listen to the AI in industry podcast with Voysis CEO, Peter Cahill

Read Brian's post, You're already a voice designer, you just don't know it yet

Where to listen

iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play V.U.X. World on Alexa

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All about voice first games with Florian Hollandt Apr 30, 2018

Show notes

Voice first games are one of the most popular Amazon Alexa skill categories. So what type of voice games are available? And how do you create them? We speak to game developer and reviewer, Florian Hollandt, to find out.

Games are helping Alexa take off. According to Voicebot.ai, Alexa Skill games are the second most popular skill categorybehind smart home skills. Amazon has been encouraging the development of games, too. We've seen the Alexa Skills Challenge: Kids recently and I'd say it’s more than likely that most of the developer rewards will have gone to game developers, given the engaging nature of games.

We’ve touched upon voice first games on the podcast previously, such as our chat with Jo Jaquinta of Tsa Tsa Tzu, but we haven’t yet covered audio game development in detail, which is what we’ll do today.

Creating voice first games

In this episode, we’ll be getting into detail about the different kids of voice first games that are out there, as well as looking at some of the techniques you can use to create engaging games such as interactive stories.

We’ll cover things like:

Naming a game and how a name can reduce discoverability
The challenge of providing content
The one game per month challenge
The types of games that are available on Amazon Alexa
Game design techniques
Interactive story game development techniques
Fake decisions - what are they and how can you use them to enhance engagement

Our Guest

Florian Hollandt is the Product Manager at Jovo, the cross platform voice app platform, and is also an Alexa game developer and reviewer. He’s created some popular games on Alexa, such as the German card game, Mau Mau, and has written a ton of voice first game reviews on Medium.

Florian is madly passionate about voice first games and his knowledge on the subject is impressive. He guides us through his experience and shares some delightful tips on how you can start creating voice first games yourself.

Links

Follow Florian on Twitter
Check out Florian's voice first game reviews on Medium

Some of the things Florian spoke about:

Voice first game design tutorial from Amazon
The Mitsuku chat bot
Woebot
One game per month website
Select a story
Magic door
Mr Robot

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Turning Alexa for Business into a business with Bob Stolzberg Apr 23, 2018

Show notes

Today, we’re following the story of the inspirational Bob Stolzberg of VoiceXP, and giving you some deep insights into how you can turn Alexa for Business into a business.

In this episode, Dustin and I are getting into the detail of how VoiceXP came to be, how Bob almost made $14,500 profit from his first Alexa Skill, why voice is such a big opportunity and how he turned Alexa for Business into a business.

We’re also discussing the features that come with Amazon Alexa for Business and some example use cases taken from Bob’s experience, as well as plenty of other areas such as:

Selling to corporate clients
The difference between a skill builder and a business
The risk of using amazon alexa in business
Security concerns and DR compliance
The risks that corporate clients face and mitigations
The importance of being a Amazon partner
Private vs public skills
Locking down devices
Use cases and future use cases
Reporting and analytics
Agnostic roadmaps
The hard work required to start a startup

Our Guest

After spending 20 years working in the enterprise IT field, Bob Stolzberg founded VoiceXP, the voice first company that helps businesses create efficiencies and increase productivity through voice. Bob and his team work with enterprise clients and SMEs to implement Alexa for Business within organisations. From designing and building specific skills for clients, to the full implementation of the devices and platform.

Bob’s experience of the enterprise IT environment gives him a unique understanding of the corporate IT world, the kind of people that make purchasing decisions and the kind of risks or concerns IT professionals will perceive with new technology platforms such as this. He’s managed to overcome those concerns, mitigate those risks and build a thriving business that’s just joined one of the top startup accelerators in the US, Capital Innovators.

Bob’s an immensely engaging and passionate guy, and offers some amazing guidance and pointers for anyone looking to turn voice into a business. This is a truly inspirational listen.

Where to listen

iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play V.U.X. World on Alexa

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How people REALLY use Amazon Alexa with Martin Porcheron Apr 16, 2018

Show notes

Today, we’re discussing the findings of Martin Porcheron’s study, ‘Voice interfaces in everyday life’. We uncover insights into how people actually use Amazon Alexa in the home. We find unique user behaviour, new technology challenges and understand what it all means for voice UX designers, developers and brands.

Voice interfaces in everyday life

Imagine if you could eaves drop into someone's house and listen to how they interact with their Amazon Echo. Imagine, whenever someone said “Alexa”, you were there. Imagine being able to hear everything thing that was said for an entire minute before the word “Alexa” was uttered, and then stick around for a whole 60 seconds after the interaction with Alexa was over.

Well, that’s exactly what today’s guest and his associates did, and his findings offer some unique lessons for VUX designers, developers and brands that’ll help you create more natural voice user experiences that work.

In this episode, we’re discussing:

How people use digital assistants in public
The background of Voice interfaces in everyday life
The challenge of what you call your Alexa skill
The issue of recall
How Amazon can improve skill usage
The inherent problem of discoverability in voice
How Echo use is finely integrated into other activities
The implications of treating an Echo as a single user device
The challenge of speech recognition in the ‘hurly burly’ of moderns life
How people collaboratively attempt to solve interaction problems
What is ‘political’ control and how does it apply to voice first devices?
Pranking people’s Alexa and the effect on future Amazon advertising
Designing for device control
Why these devices aren’t actually conversational
The importance of responses

Key takeaways for designers and developers

Give your skill a name that’s easy for recall
Make your responses succinct, fit within a busy and crowded environment
Make sure your responses are a resource for further action - how will the user do the next thing?
Consider designing for multiple users
Don’t use long intros and tutorials, get straight to the point
Don’t design for a conversation, design to get things done

Our Guest

Martin Porcheron is a Research Associate in the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham and has a PhD in Ubiquitous Computing, a sub-set of Computer Science. Martin has conducted several studies in the field of human-computer interaction, including looking at how people make use of mobile phones in conversations i.e. how people use something like Siri mid-conversation and how those interactions unfold.

Martin’s angle isn’t to look at these things as critical or problematic, but to approach them as an opportunity to learn about how people make use of technology currently. He believe this enables us to make more informed design decisions.

The study we discuss today has won many plaudits including Best Paper Award at the CHI 2018 conference.

Links

Read the Voice interfaces in everyday life study
Follow Martin on Twitter
Read Martin's blog post on the study
Read Martin's colleague, Stuart Reeves' post on the study on Medium
Visit Martin's website

Where you can listen:

iTunes/Apple podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Pippa
Any other podcast player you use or ask Any Pod to play V.U.X. World on Alexa

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tackling the challenges of discoverability and monetisation on Amazon Alexa with Jo Jaquinta Apr 09, 2018

Show notes

Today, we're getting deep into the biggest challenges facing designers and developers on the Alexa platform: being discovered and making money. And who better to take us through it, than one of the most experienced developers on the voice scene, Jo 'the Oracle' Jaquinta.

Speak to anyone who's serious about voice first development and they'll tell you the two biggest challenges facing the voice first world right now are skill discoverability and monetisation. Vasili Shynkarenka of Storyline mentioned it and so did Matt Hartman of Betaworks when they featured on the VUX World podcast previously.

However, we rarely hear stories from people who've tried everything they can to overcome these challenges. Until now.

In this episode, we're joined by Dustin Coates as co-host and we're speaking to Jo about his vast experience of designing and developing on the Amazon Alexa platform and how he's approached tackling those two big challenges.

We also discuss voice UX design techniques that Jo's picked up along the way, as well as the tools and techniques he uses for developing skills.

This one is jam-packed with epic insights from someone who few know more than in this space right now, and includes discussion on a vast array of subjects including:

Discoverability:

The impact of advertising on increasing skill adoption
The effect of being featured in the Amazon Alexa newsletter
What Amazon can do to help skill discovery
How transferring between modalities can loose users

Monetisation:

The challenges of turning skill development into a business
The difference between Google’s and Amazon’s strategy
The two ways to make money from voice: the easy way and the hard way
Why a monetisation API shouldn't be the focus for developers
Why Amazon Alexa developer payouts are bad for the voice environment

Design:

The challenges of designing for voice with a screen
How immersive audio games help the visually impaired
How Amazon could improve the UX for users by moving to a 'streaming' approach to voice
Why you shouldn’t be aiming for a ‘conversational’ experience
What is the method of Loci and how can it be used when designing for voice?

Development:

Fuzzy matching
Building and maintaining your own library and SDK
Cross platform development

Other gems include:

Structural problems with the Alexa platform
How company culture affects voice strategy
Why it’s not early days in voice
Alexa for business and privacy

Our Guest

Jo Jaquinta is a software developer with over 20 years' experience. Jo started building skills on the Alexa platform a short time after it was released, has created a host of interesting skills and learned plenty along the way through pulling Alexa in all kinds of different directions. His knowledge, experience and plenty of lessons learned were all applied in building Jo's most recent skill, the madly complex, 6 Swords.

Jo shares plenty of his voice design and development knowledge on his YouTube channel, which is full of engaging and interesting insights, and has put pen to paper to share his knowledge in the shape of two books on Alexa: How to Program Amazon Echo and Developing Amazon Alexa Games. He's also active on the Alexa Slack channel, helping people solve their development problems and consulting on voice design and development.

What Jo doesn't know about developing on Alexa isn't worth knowing. His immense knowledge and vast experience in this area are pretty much unrivalled, which is why I refer to him as 'the Oracle'.

Where to Listen:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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VUX World

What is Alpha Voice?

In this episode

Our guest

Where to listen

Links

What about voice analytics?

In this episode

Our guest

Where to listen

Links

In this episode

Privacy and security

Our Guest

Where to listen

Links

About BotTalk

Our Guest

Links

Where to listen

Voice search

Getting deep into voice search

Our Guest

Links

Where to listen

Mic check

In this episode

Our Guest

About Voysis

Links

Where to listen

Creating voice first games

Our Guest

Links

Some of the things Florian spoke about:

Our Guest

Links

Where to listen

Voice interfaces in everyday life

In this episode, we’re discussing:

Key takeaways for designers and developers

Our Guest

Links

Our Guest

Links

Where to Listen:

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