You take the carton from the refrigerator door and give it a shake. “Empty,” you think to yourself. No problem. “Hey Google,” you exclaim, activating your Google Home device.
“Ask Colruyt to add milk to the list.” But instead of confirming the addition, your home device informs you that “Milk has already been added to your grocery list. Would you like to add an additional carton?” You know the culprit—your heavy milk-drinking girlfriend Sharon.
You’re so impressed by this digital gesture that you almost forget about Sharon putting the empty carton back in the fridge for the 100th time. Today, most of us understand that this isn’t some distant sci-fi fantasy. In fact, for customers of one of Belgium’s largest supermarket chains, Colruyt, it’s already a reality. Recently, I spoke with Yves Van Kerkhove of the Colruyt Group.
Yves was a student in our first UX writing course and has been working on a game-changing project—a voice interface app for Colruyt’s supermarket shoppers.
Yves relied upon his 15 years of copywriting experience plus massive amounts of testing to bring it to fruition. The result is a full-fledged voice interface assistant for online shopping.
This episode is for you if you are curious about:
- The future of writers in tech
- Working in a product team without a UI designer
- Writing a voice interface app
- Testing for voice interfaces
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
EPISODE NOTES
Colruyt introduces voice commerce in Belgium
https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/food/colruyt-introduces-voice-commerce-belgium
Designing a VUI — Voice User Interface
https://uxplanet.org/designing-a-vui-voice-user-interface-c0b3b9b57ace
Voice User Interfaces (VUI) — The Ultimate Designer’s Guide
https://medium.muz.li/voice-user-interfaces-vui-the-ultimate-designers-guide-8756cb2578a1
How to Design Voice User Interfaces
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-design-voice-user-interfaces
The user experience of choosing the simplest possible words
https://uxdesign.cc/the-user-experience-of-choosing-the-simplest-possible-words-90628a3c4a44
Let’s Talk About Brand Personality, Voice, and Tone
https://medium.com/s/how-to-build-a-brand/lets-talk-about-brand-personality-voice-and-tone-28276a48d5c1
Write Like a Human
https://medium.com/write-like-a-human/write-like-a-human-61f6c7c0752c
Get Started with System Voice Actions
https://developers.google.com/voice-actions/system/
What is a Voice User Interface?
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/vui
Siri for Developers
https://developer.apple.com/siri/
Plain Language Is for Everyone, Even Experts
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/plain-language-experts/
New App Uses AI to Enable Users to Explore Sneakers In AR
https://news.developer.nvidia.com/new-app-uses-ai-to-enable-users-to-explore-sneakers-in-ar/
Miro (formerly real-time board)
https://miro.com/index/
Whimsical
https://whimsical.com/
Free UX Writing course
https://course.uxwritinghub.com/free_course
