Cathy Pearl wrote the book on creating voice assistants. Literally. “Designing Voice User Interfaces” teaches us how voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are put together. What makes Cathy fabulous is that she is not only an expert, she is a teacher: she breaks down complex concepts and alglrithms into plain english and teaches them to us with great examples and analogies.

Thanks to voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, soon we will talk to our computers as easily as we talk to our fellow humans. Speech recognition is rapidly improving, and we can look forward to a seamless experience as we work, watch video, listen to podcasts, or do errands hands-free: moving from our phones to our cars to our homes.

The technical term for these voice assistants is VUI or voice-user interface, and the “wizards behind the curtain” who create the voice experience are known as VUI conversation designers,
content strategists, or UX/UI writers. This is a very exciting, rapidly growing career and I want you to hear from the industry leaders.

I dream of the day when we can talk to computers as easily as we speak to each other, and computers will become much more powerful, convenient tools than we can imagine. Join me in learning from the experts of this burgeoning field.