Sketching is increasingly being used in the interaction design community (and elsewhere) for generating and analyzing ideas, storyboarding, and creating low-fidelity prototypes. But sketching is not usually a technique that comes to mind when designing for voice. This talk shows how sketching can uncover potential problems early in the design and can help the application better fit people and the contexts they’re in. Simple techniques will be demonstrated for sketching and modeling voice interactions.

The use of speech in multimodal applications forces us to ask how to blend design disciplines of those who’ve done little work outside speech and IVR
and those who have worked exclusively in GUI design. This talk focuses on the need for that blend and encourages cross-mode skill training for designers and managers. The overarching goal is to enable designers to create highperformance multimodal applications that are optimized for business success and positive user experiences.