Just be yourself. 5

When I moved from Mexico to the US, I had difficulties expressing myself in English. And because personal expression is so important to me, I had a lot of frustrating experiences where I longed to use the Spanish words I felt more comfortable with. But I also knew that I wanted to make a life here; I knew that this language was to be my new medium of communication. So I was patient with myself and, thankfully, so too were my new friends and colleagues. 🇲🇽🇺🇸

We’ll all have to be patient with this new conversational technology. We still have a lot of work to do to improve natural language understanding and speech technology. In the meantime, you’re bound to have a few frustrating interactions where, like me in my first years here in the US, you long for your accustomed medium. But deep down, you know the world is changing and many of these interaction models are becoming obsolete. 🌎

We should just be grateful that we don’t need to learn a new language to interact with this new technology. We just need to get used to speaking it with somebody — or better yet, something — that is still learning to talk. So be patient, be open-minded, and just be yourself. Only then will the future of technology finally take a human shape.This might be the end of the article, but hopefully the beginning of a longer conversation. I’m eager to expand my thinking in this space and would love to hear your perspectives. 🎆

Fore more about this conversation, here’s my latest talk @ CX SF 2019 🕺🏽and podcast at Forrester What It Means series (The Ambiguity-Laden March Toward People-Centric Design). 👋🏽

Illustrations by Helen Slavutsky