Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/books-on-speech-a-voice-designers-reading-list-239f21c4cfc1?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Cheryl Platz 
<h4>Dive deeper into the world of VUI with a few key textbooks on the subject</h4>
It’s been a delight touring this year and meeting so many enthusiastic designers ready to take their first steps towards adding voice design skills to their user experience toolbox!
An extremely common question is “what should I read to get started?” In that vein, I’d like to share the four books I recommend to the folks in my “Giving Voice to Your Voice Designs” workshop. May these send you down the path towards creating a successful voice user interface!
Full disclosure: the links above are Amazon affiliate links, but I only recommend books I’ve reviewed personally, and none of the authors or publishers have compensated me for these recommendations. Do you have any books you’d recommend that aren’t listed here? Please feel free to share them in the comments.
<h4>Wired for Speech (by Clifford Nass)</h4>
Available at Amazon on <a href="http://amzn.to/2vU1vVE">Kindle</a> or <a href="http://amzn.to/2v7Fvt0">paperback</a>.
Before you get into the deep details about how to design for voice, I highly recommend starting with the excellent Wired for Speech by the late Stanford researcher Clifford Nass. This book, based on a number of research studies and Cliff’s consulting work with a variety of companies in multiple industries, examines the psychological impact of speech interfaces that aren’t normally encountered in purely visual scenarios.
For those particularly interested in the “gendered voices” discussion- aka “why are so many voice assistants women?”-this is required reading. It won’t answer that question for you, but it will give you a better understanding of how gender impacts perception when using a voice user interface.
<h4>Designing Voice User Interfaces (by Cathy Pearl)</h4>
Available at Amazon on <a href="http://amzn.to/2hcO3sS">Kindle</a> or <a href="http://amzn.to/2v7sGi5">paperback</a>.
The most recent textbook on the market is Designing Voice User Interfaces by Cathy Pearl. As a former employee at Nuance, one of the biggest original players in the voice user interfaces space, she brings to bear a great deal of experience in the space.
Cathy walks through a variety of topics — from some basic design recommendations to example research techniques and an entire chapter devoted to pairing a visual avatar with a spoken interface.
<h4>Voice User Interface Design (by Giangola and Balogh)</h4>
Paperback and used copies<a href="http://amzn.to/2v6HLAM"> are available on Amazon</a>.
This textbook is older, but a classic that you’ll find on the desk of many designers behind your favorite voice assistants. It was published at a time when the most common voice interfaces were interactive phone systems (IVR), and is written with that goal in mind. Even still, the content is still so relevant that Cathy Pearl referenced the book several times in her own more recent textbook.
In particular, this book is a useful tool for those looking to get deeper into the design deliverables — I found it to be the strongest example of flow and state design for voice interfaces.
Unfortunately, there is no digital version available, and it’s a bit pricier than the other options — but I found an affordable used copy, and it may still be worth it for you, particularly if you’re designing for an audio-only system.
<h4>The Man Who Lied to his Laptop</h4>
Available on Amazon on <a href="http://amzn.to/2uJaudL">Kindle </a>or <a href="http://amzn.to/2eXoRFS">paperback</a>.
If you’ve worked your way through the first three books and are still hungry for more, I recommend circling back to the work of Clifford Nass and continuing with The Man Who Lied to His Laptop. While the book is not specifically devoted to voice user interfaces, several of the examples and studies are directly applicable — and many of the others are relevant from the perspective of customers anthropomorphizing their devices.
<h4>Online Reference Materials</h4>
For a better understanding of the logistics behind shipping a 3rd party skill on a major voice platform, Amazon’s <a href="https://developer.amazon.com/designing-for-voice/">Alexa Voice Design Guide</a> is the best place to start. Their team (my former team) is ahead of the pack in terms of providing free, publicly available guidelines.
This should be more than enough to get you started, but I fully expect this list to evolve over time. As I continue my own exploration of the voice design space, I may expand this list with additional recommendations. In particular, I’m currently exploring a variety of materials on the creation of chatbots (more text than VUI currently, but that will change…).
And may the voice be with you!
<blockquote>Cheryl Platz has worked on a variety of voice designs including the Echo Look and Echo Show, Amazon’s Alexa platform, Windows Automotive, and Cortana. Cheryl is currently Design Lead for the Azure Portal and Marketplaces at Microsoft, and is now touring worldwide with her workshop “<a href="http://blog.cherylplatz.com/?p=569">Giving Voice to Your Voice Designs</a>” in 2017 — coming to EuroIA in Stockholm in September and Webdagene in Oslo in October.</blockquote>
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Books on Speech: A Voice Designer’s Reading List

Dive deeper into the world of VUI with a few key textbooks on the subject

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