The role of design in the era of conversational interfaces.

With the spread of voice assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri we are witnessing the multiplication of products we can interact by talking using natural language. This chapter refers to these products as “Conversational Smart products”, or ConvSP for brevity. The term conversational is used to describe them since they embed and embody Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs). The suffix “Smart” is earned because they possess particular technical features, as they are cyber-physical (merging digital-software and physical-hardware components), networked, and have computational intelligence capabilities. The first half of the chapter explores the specific traits of Conversational Smart Products, while the second revolves around how conversational interfaces influence products and product design practice. It offers a descriptive analysis framework and strategic design guidelines for novice and expert product designers interested in approaching the design of ConvSP.