Conversation Design for Chatbots

Learn how to structure clear, human-centered chatbot experiences whether you’re working with rules-based logic or generative AI. This course covers the core principles of conversation design, with a hands-on project in Voiceflow.

> Get the syllabus

Standard price: USD $650.00
UXCC students: USD ~~$650.00~~ $552.50

Meet the author

HIllary is a conversation designer, content creator, and community builder who has made it her mission to help more people become conversation designers and create better bots. Hillary manages brand and conversation design for Mav, an AI-powered agent to help scale client services.

“The feedback was one of my favorite parts of the course! I wasn't expecting a real person to review my work and take the time to look through it.”

Emily Jones

Senior Conversation Designer, UnitedHealthcare

"We wanted a fundamental training that provided a calibration for some basic understanding on how we do our daily work."

Isabelle Gao

Senior UX Writing Lead, HSBC

Conversations don’t design themselves

As chatbots become more common in products and services, poor experiences still dominate. The problem? It’s not the tech, it’s the design. Whether powered by rules or LLMs, every bot needs a clear goal, a consistent voice, and a user-centered structure.

This course teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, empathetic, and effective no matter what’s behind the scenes. And you’ll put theory to practice with a chatbot designed in Voiceflow.

About the course

What do you leave with?

A solid understanding of conversation design principles for any type of chatbot
Clarity on how to define chatbot goals, audiences, and personality
Practical frameworks for designing intents, flows, and dialogue
Hands-on experience building a chatbot in Voiceflow
Best practices for testing and improving chatbot content
A portfolio-ready project that demonstrates your ability to design structured, people-centered conversations
The confidence to collaborate with product teams on conversational interfaces, AI-powered or not

Who is this for?

UX writers and content designers who want to expand into conversation design
Writers interested in designing for both rules-based and AI chatbots
Teams working on chatbots who need a clear, consistent approach to design
Anyone in a product or content role who wants to improve chatbot quality and usability
Designers and strategists looking to build real-world chatbot experience using Voiceflow

How does the course work?

Course syllabus

Learning bot basics

Setting context

Lesson 1: Different types of chatbots
Lesson 2: An introduction to our chatbot project
Lesson 3: Establishing the chatbot goal
Lesson 4: Defining the audience
Lesson 5: Defining the chatbot personality
Lesson 6: Tone, empathy and naming

Strategizing before designing

Designing and writing your bot

Lesson 1: What influences conversation design
Lesson 2: Conversation design principles
Lesson 3: Best practices
Lesson 4: Creating your script
Lesson 5: Writing your flows
Lesson 6: Designing advanced bots

Protoyping in Voiceflow

User testing and handoff

The choice of 5,000+ learners

"Our product team made a content update using the ideas from the Fundamentals of UX Writing course. We've since seen a 20% increase in conversions."

Sam DeReign

Group Content Strategist, Course Hero

“One of the pieces of support that your program provides for me is that newer team members are able to explain why something’s being written in the way that it has.”