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  • Self-paced
  • Skill
  • Conversation Design and AI

Conversation Design for Chatbots

A conversation design course for people who want to learn how to structure clear, human-centered chatbot experiences. Whether you’re working with rules-based or AI chatbots, learn the core principles of chatbot conversation design.

> Get the syllabus

  • Earn a certificate with expert-reviewed work
  • Create a chatbot prototype in Voiceflow
  • Payment plans (2 or 4 months)
  • Teams save up to 30%
  • Credit card, PayPal, wire transfer, or Affirm

Standard price: USD $ 650.00
UXCC students: USD $ 552.50 USD $ 552.50 (15% off!)

Currencies other than USD are estimates. Payments are in USD. 

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Meet the author

Hillary Black
Head of Conversation Design, Mav

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

Whether powered by rules or LLMs, every bot needs a clear goal, a consistent voice, and a user-centered structure.

This conversation design course teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, empathetic, and effective no matter what’s behind the scenes. Students use Voiceflow to create a portfolio project.

About our conversation design course

  • 20-40 hours
  • Student community
  • Lifetime access

What do you leave with?

  • A solid understanding of conversation design principles for any type of chatbot
  • Clarity on how to define chatbot UX 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 conversation design course work?

Hands-on exercises

Complete challenging work that reflects real-world scenarios at the end of each unit.

Personalized feedback

Get personalized feedback at the end of each unit from working content designers.

Final project in Voiceflow

Finish with a comprehensive project to showcase your skills.

Fundamentals of Support Content Certificate

Earn a certificate

Showcase your professional conversation design certificate on LinkedIn.

Study aids

Get detailed summaries at the end of each unit - and you get lifetime access to the course.

Learn Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Instructional videos

Watch professional content designers break down complex topics.

Conversation design course syllabus

Learning bot basics

  • Lesson 1: What are chatbots?
  • Lesson 2: Why do businesses want chatbots?
  • Lesson 3: What does a conversation designer do?
  • Lesson 4: Who a conversation designer works with

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

  • Lesson 1: The anatomy of a chatbot
  • Lesson 2: A chatbot designer's toolbox
  • Lesson 3: Creating key intents
  • Lesson 4: Creating an outline
  • Lesson 5: Creating a flow map

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

  • Lesson 1: How to set standards for a prototype
  • Lesson 2: How to use Voiceflow
  • Lesson 3: Testing as you go

User testing and handoff

  • Lesson 1: Qualitative testing
  • Lesson 2: Quantitative testing
  • Lesson 3: Preparing your chatbot for handoff
  • Lesson 4: Continuous improvement
  • Lesson 5: What's next?

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.”
Craig Bell
Director of Content, Xello
"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
"The material is excellent and so thorough! I'm so impressed. It's such a wonderful resource for our discipline."
Jen Schaefer
Content Design Manager, Netflix

Learn conversation design from experts

Joel Ramey

Conversation Designer

Jenny Cowan

Content Design Team Lead, Later

Daree Allen Nieves

Freelance Content Designer

Sammie Spector

Design Lead, Vogue

Casey Webb

Senior Content Designer, eBay

Thy Nguyen

Principal Content Designer, Walmart

Some frequently asked questions

Do I really need a conversation design course?

There are plenty of ways to learn conversation design, including books and articles. Not everyone needs to learn using a course.

However, a course can be useful. We bring together resources and exercises in a structured way, so you don’t have to search for everything yourself. You’ll also get feedback on your exercises as you move through the course, which is something you won’t have access to if you learn on your own.

Yes, we offer a certificate for the Conversation Design for Chatbots course. You’ll earn a certificate once you successfully complete the final project.

There are two main types of creating chatbots: AI, and rules-based logic. While the course predominantly focuses on rules-based logic, we also discuss AI.

This course is mainly designed to teach conversation design principles that can be used by both AI and rules-based chatbots.

Yes, the Conversation Design for Chatbots course offers a final project you can put in a portfolio. The course allows students to design their own chatbot.

Fortune 500 companies choose us to train product teams

Upskill your UX content team

We can combine self-paced courses, workshops, or create custom sessions for your team based on unique needs.

Get in touch - we'd love to speak with you.

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