Designing Hybrid Conversational AI
In this episode of the CDI Expert Series: Unprompted, we sit down with Rebecca Evanhoe to explore what it really takes to design and scale conversational AI in production. Drawing on her work building voice AI for thousands of restaurants at Slang.ai, Rebecca shares a grounded, experience-driven perspective on hybrid systems, evaluation, and why strong conversation design principles matter more than ever in the age of LLMs.
We delve into the practical realities of deploying conversational AI at scale, moving past the hype to emphasize that hybrid architectures, combining deterministic logic with carefully scoped LLM tasks, are essential for voice-based and high-stakes environments. A major focus is on rigorous evaluation, where Rebecca outlines the process of designing experiments, defining clear success criteria, and combining human and automated testing to build confidence and mitigate hallucinations, rather than trusting LLMs out of the box.
This episode also covers:
- Why hybrid conversational systems outperform fully generative approaches
- How to evaluate LLMs for real-world conversational use cases
- Designing voice AI that respects turn-taking, timing, and social norms
- Using LLMs as components rather than full conversation drivers
- The growing importance of evaluation as a core design skill
- What conversation designers should focus on as AI tooling evolves
- Balancing automation, hospitality, and brand experience in voice interfaces
This episode offers a practical, no-nonsense look at what it takes to design conversational AI that actually works. So after listening, the question becomes: how do you design conversational AI systems that are not just powerful but reliable, testable, and ready for the real world?
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Rebecca Evanhoe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-evanhoe
Author of Conversations with Things, Product Manager at Slang.ai
What is Unprompted?
Welcome to Unprompted, a conversation series by the Conversation Design Institute, where we explore the craft, the practice, and the future of conversational AI with the people shaping it.
Learn directly from global leaders, designers, and researchers who are shaping the future of Conversational AI. Each episode of Unprompted brings candid insights, practical lessons, and behind-the-scenes stories from the people building today’s most impactful AI experiences.