Microsoft Cortana
Microsoft assistant before Co-Pilots
I worked with Cortana just as Microsoft purchased both Semantic Machines and a stake in OpenAI — it was an exciting time. This time started a long romance with Ai, conversation design and NLP for me.
TLDR
Conversation design for Microsoft's Cortana assistant, focusing on user interaction refinement and localization while collaborating with global teams.
Tools
Cortana azure pipeline (like an early version of Googles dialogue UI but in xml), Voice studio (Azure), MS Office, validation tools
Skills
conversation design, ux writing
Problem
A lot of Cortana conversation design resembles current generation chat-bots (and the quirks that come with designing conversation with scenarios and triggers).The official role title of experience writer comes in from the localisation element.Often designing conversations for Cortana had more in common with magazine editorship than traditional conversation design. This often involved connecting scenarios with Bing results that were trending for the local market. Conversational curatorship around national/state specific holidays and events was also an extension of this editor feeling.
Process (user statement)
User command “Shut up” bothered me for sometime. Too often personal assistants like Cortana are treated as submissive, often sexist stereotypes. So although it was important to perform the user request, we needed to do it in a way that signified the persona of Cortana wasn’t having any of this kind of treatment from the user. I began by researching what other voice assistants were responding with at the time.I moved on to exploring the contexts for the utterance “shut up”, looking through logs of what users had actually said and what other markets had offered as potential triggers for this scenario.I mapped the many contextual circumstances and intentions ie another utterance failed, a user is trying to get her to stop talking quickly and even just annoyance.My manager at the time was happy with “ok” but that didn’t sit right for me (and the rest of the UK/India/Aus team). Enter the ellipsis …The ellipsis “…” was the only solution that didn’t play into the submissive personal assistant stereotype and performed the user request at the same time.
Solution
The images here are very high level examples of the work achieved.Please reach out for detailed Figjam documents covering my conversation design process in detail.
Outcome
While at Microsoft I;
Collaborated with Voice Designers to improve the Matilda Neural voice (Australian Localization).
Collaborated with Semantic Machines to improve Linguistic approaches to NLP for Australia Cortana and then validate strings for Play My Emails.
Was highly active in design team meetings and activities. Interacting with Bill Buxton (product design legend) was a memorable experience.
This was my first role in a truly global cross-collaborative team and I loved it. Perhaps the most important outcome for me was learning the true non-linear dynamic way that users engage with writing, words and design elements in the digital space.Working on such a broad product with incredibly varied uses — and use contexts — really expands how you think about and engage with UX-writing and content design.