Shiny New Object

“I create personalities for the computers that people talk to”  This quote comes from Wally Brill, Google’s Head of Conversation Design Advocacy & Education this week on the Shiny New Object Podcast. In this conversation, he takes us on a journey from being a record producer to an interactive opera composer and how he ended up leading Voice design for Google.    Wally points out that being able to have a conversation does not give you the qualification to teach a computer how to speak. There’s a “deeper layer” to conversation which we don’t always notice. For example, when we talk to each other we use “micro-expressions” which act as conversational cues and indicate our underlying emotions. But Voice assistants can’t see these micro-expressions. It’s like Google Home or Alexa only ever talk to you with their eyes closed. Wally’s job is to design human-like conversations for Google Assistant even though they don’t see and speak as we do. We aren’t born with the ability to read a room, we learn it from expe