What is conversation design?

Nothing is visible, which removes every crutch that visual design leans on. No menu, no back button, no list to scan.

Working memory sets the limits. Three options is about the ceiling for anything read aloud, and people forget the first one while hearing the third.

One question at a time is the rule that fixes the most problems. Ask two and you get an answer to one of them.

Recovery paths matter more than the happy path, because the happy path mostly looks after itself.

Confirmation is the other half of that. Reading a detail back is the cheapest way to catch a misheard number before it becomes a missed appointment.

Say your first design opens with: "To book, I'll need your full name, date of birth, phone number and preferred day." Callers answer with whichever piece they remember. "Uh, it's Dan Reyes, and Thursday?" Now the assistant has to go back for the two it didn't get, and Dan feels like he failed a test.

Your redesign asks one thing per turn and puts the easy one first. It asks what day works, and Dan says Thursday. Next comes "Morning or afternoon?", and he picks morning. It offers 9:20 or 10:40, he takes 10:40, and only then does it ask for his name. Those short turns are nearly impossible to get wrong. They take about 25 seconds, which is no longer than the first version once you count the repair. Look at the "morning or afternoon" step, too. Offering two choices narrows the calendar before any times are read, so nobody has to sit through six slots after they stopped listening at the third.

Most designs fail at the moment a caller says something unexpected, so plan your repairs. For a mishearing, have the assistant repeat only the doubtful part. "Did you say the 15th or the 16th?" beats "Sorry, I didn't catch that", which makes your caller repeat everything. For a correction partway through, such as "actually, make it Friday", the design should accept it without restarting the booking. A change of subject gets answered or handed over, and then the assistant returns to where it was: "Back to your booking. Friday morning?"

Set a limit on repairs. After two failed attempts at the same detail, the next step shouldn't be another rephrasing. It should be a person or a message.

You can find weak turns in your transcripts by searching for the assistant's own apologies. Every "sorry" marks a turn worth redesigning, and the fault usually sits in the turn just before it.

You write what GreetKeeper asks and in what order, so the design is yours rather than a template we imposed.

Transcripts show where callers hesitated, repeated themselves, or gave up, which is a map of exactly what to rewrite.

Short questions and one thing at a time solve most of it. That advice is unglamorous and it is what actually works.