Conversation design using time-tested Best Practices and up-to-the-minute AI enhancements

Mentor and advise students looking to make career change into Conversation Design. Evaluate, edit, grade, and advise on student assignments• Beginning to advanced Amazon Alexa skill design• Provide feedback to students on quality of their completed assignments, and advise on how to improve, strengthen, and market their conversation design skill

Establish UX design processes, protocols, business value, methodologies, and design deliverables. Provide high-quality conversation designs for a mail-order pharmacy handling millions of phone calls, text messages, and chatbot interactions every month. Mentor junior team members, to establish a culture of Design Thinking and Best Practices.

Owner/Principal Design Consultant (2000-Present)Colla Voce Consulting (San Francisco, CA 94114)Knowledgeable, energetic, and effective design-team and business-analysis leadership for client companies including Live Nation / Ticketmaster, Verizon Communications, eLoyalty, Intervoice, Convergys, Nuance, Marketing Architects, Microsoft Corporation, DISH Network, US Bank, Wachovia Bank, US Airways, United Airlines, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and the State of Utah.Major accomplishments:• Featured speaker at SpeechTek 2008; Maintaining Interface Symmetry in Multimodal Applications• VUI/IVR audit business (sales transaction) analysis for Marketing Architects • Average 5%-7% improvement in “take rate” for direct-marketing campaigns that use automated order fulfillment • Automation increase of up to 50%, reducing manual transcription cost by tens of thousands of dollars• Design audit/refresh for Microsoft Xbox customer self-service application, projected to save millions in customer-support costs. • Freshened persona redesign/update — improved take rate and call completion rates by ~19% • Streamlined call flow — reduced average call time by ~7%• Bilingual redesign (English/Spanish) of self-service Billing inquiry and Ordering VUI application for DISH Network • $18 million annual savings over staffed CSRs and legacy system • Averages 6% higher success rate than legacy TouchTone applications, with annual cost savings of tens of millions• First-ever outbound dialer application (Rx refill reminder) for Rite-Aid Pharmacies• Award-winning VUI application for Nicor Gas Company

Design architecture, project management, and process/documentation creation for a newly created group producing cutting-edge speech applications, integrated with email, chat, and Web interfaces to provide a unified CSR environment for Fortune 500 customers.

AVOKE Analytics, a division of Raytheon BBN. Analysis of caller effort and stumbling blocks throughout the entire call experience, from initial greeting through IVR, queue, and agent time. Quantification of pain points, with specific and actionable recommendations for optimizing the caller experience, reducing caller effort, and enhancing caller effectiveness and satisfaction.

Senior Voice Interface Design Engineer for a professional-services organization, currently working on a large-scale project for a nationwide healthcare provider.

As part of a startup environment, this position also included individual contributor roles and duties, including • Coordinate, design, and implement usability strategies for unified Web and VUI interfaces• Drive Human Factors/HCI/Usability assessment and design efforts for Portico and myTalk services + Achieved 1M myTalk subscribers in 6 months• Author, edit, and record prompt verbiage for Portico and myTalk unified messaging services• Design, develop, and review call flow diagrams (typically Visio spreadsheets)• Design and implement informational, instructional, and ease-of-use features for Portico and myTalk

Research, evaluate, recommend, design Web-based tool suites, processes, and content-management strategies to support intranet and extranet processes and deliverable for Oracle Video Server information products and support materiel.