Is conversation design enough? One person’s journey to find out

Some of you may recall my very public existential crisis back in March this year. Is conversation design obsolete? Are we relegated to the sidelines? Do we need a rebrand? It’s funny how one little outburst on a little blog post can snowball into a renaissance of the CxD community. A huge thank you to everyone who reached out to let me know I wasn’t alone in my feelings. Thank you to all of the senior designers who generously donate their time to stand up panels, meetups, and discussion forums to process this massive shift in our industry. And thanks to my team for listening to my rants about conversation design (they were not few, ha).

The following is the result of a myriad of conversations, insights, and personal reflection over the past few months.

AI needs conversation designers

Is conversation design obsolete? It isn’t. Conversation design has already been asking a lot of the questions we’re seeing crop up again with the popularization of Gen AI-based products and rising tide of “AI product design”. Some of them include: What should the relationship between AI and humans be like? How much AI personalization is too much— or not enough? How can we retain our humanness while still harnessing AI to bring convenience to our lives? Conversation design has a lot to offer the design field in terms of best practices, best guesses, and user behavioral trends from such a literal form of Human-Computer Interaction. Quoting myself here: “[CxDs are AI designers] who understand the unique balance between what our tech stack can do and what it should do.”

On the other hand, I fear there’s another question we’ve been neglecting to address head on: is conversation design unique? No, it isn’t. That’s not to say that anyone without guidance can pick up conversation design skills instantly. It takes research, and practice to understand the psychology behind human conversation and how to approach things like probabilistic design. I’ve seen it firsthand. However, we cannot keep considering CxD in isolation from the rest of the professions and design disciplines who are all contributing and shaping AI for the world. For example, prompt design is not exclusive to conversation design and it shouldn’t be. Product designers, content designers, UX researchers, engineers, (among other roles)— these all have a part to play with prompting. Conversation design can and should influence the digital product design narrative, but we are not special. We’re not the only AI designers out there.

Do CxDs still have value if we’re not unique? Yes, we do. The strength in this discipline lies in: our diversity of background, and our comfort with chaos. Regarding the former: though our educational resources are scarce or a little out of date, conversation design doesn’t gatekeep. We gladly accept individuals from all walks of life, from every profession you can imagine, no technical background required. For many conversation designers, this role is their introduction to tech, and their first entry into UX design. Their perspectives are crucial for building experiences that actually cater to the end user and reflect the communication styles of diverse populations at scale. Diversity of thought makes for better product teams. Regarding the latter: conversation designers are adept at designing for unpredictability, which is required of anyone working on AI products.

Like any specialization, conversation design goes for depth where generalists might go for breadth of expertise. We need these experts, still. As an industry, we should want designers whose number one purpose is to create structure for AI. We shouldn’t limit CxD perspective to only word-based models. There’s much a conversation designer can contribute to save product teams’ time experimenting with interactions, AI embodiment, or UI that have failed already.

Conversation design will keep losing senior ICs

I’m proud to call myself a conversation designer, but I worry about clinging to a title with diminishing returns. The reality is: in trying to demonstrate its merit, conversation design has pigeon-holed itself as the way to design chatbots or digital assistants. The end products have defined our discipline, not our process. Because of this, it is highly unlikely CxD as a title can offer seniority like other titles can. If product design gets “one seat at the table”, conversation design will get none.

Time is not the only mark of seniority. Becoming a senior designer means embracing all modalities of design (yes, including visual), technical skills and processes, and marrying those together with business requirements and product thinking. This is standardized for digital product design, not so much for conversation design. There are exceptions to this, of course, but it’s possible to gain seniority in conversation design just by the passing of time, never being required to branch out into other UX specializations or develop other skills like visual acuity.

To be explicit: it’s not bad to stay as a senior individual contributor in conversation design, but if your career ambition is to define the design industry or expand your influence, conversation design cannot nurture you indefinitely. I might be completely off base here, and it’s possible I might be proven wrong in 5 years time, but this is where I’m at: CxD is not a forever home for me.

Design is design

One of my deepest desires is for CxD to become mainstream. I don’t want to leave conversation design. In an ideal world, my colleagues in product and UX design would learn and adopt conversation design, same as how I’m learning and adopting visual design. In this idealized future: the most valuable designers in tech would be a new kind of triple threat: designers who can master product (UX/UI) and conversation (AI) design, as well as product thinking (business needs). They would be the next generation of designers, paving the way in a future world where AI wearables reign, or where voice is table stakes for all new products. Ultimately, design is design, and if we’re here, it’s because we love design and the endless possibilities of our technology. Why can’t we be friends?

3.5 years as a CxD: what’s next?

I’m so grateful for everything I’ve gained from CxD: the friendships, the opportunities, the resources, and the community. Okay, seriously, not only was I invited to speak at Unparsed (my first on-stage speaking gig ever!!!👀), because of my blog post, I was also invited to moderate a panel at Unparsed on the conversation design career progression with designers I’ve been looking up to since forever. “Never meet your heroes” unless your heroes are conversation designers because they are absolutely wonderful!

Honestly, I’m still figuring out what’s next. One thing is certain: I want to keep learning about design and become more well-rounded in my skillset. The title may change, it might not. I’ll still be a conversation designer at heart. Small amendment: as of yesterday, I’ll still be a senior conversation designer at heart (she got promoted).

As far as my online persona, elaineinthebay, goes: I still care deeply about sharing CxD resources. I can’t do it forever, but at least for now, I have a few more topics waiting to be written about. I hope I can deliver.

Topics include:

• Multimodal Design
• Design for Wearables
• Conversation Design Lore

Elaine Anzaldo is a seasoned Conversation Designer, having worked on voice technologies at companies such as Meta, NLX, Apple, and SRI International. As a designer for both influential voice assistants and the customer self-service industry, she has created natural conversational artifacts for voice, chat, and multimodal interfaces. Elaine is deeply passionate about designing for AI and exploring the benefits and implications of this cutting-edge technology.

To learn more about Elaine and her work, visit LinkedIn, Instagram, or her notion page.

Growing as a conversation designer was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.