Designing Conversational AI That is Trustworthy and Empathetic | From Scripts to System Behaviour
In this episode of the CDI Expert Series: Unprompted, we sit down with Nandini Stocker, a global leader in conversational AI with over 25 years of experience designing voice and chat systems across 60+ languages and 120 countries. Drawing on her work at Google, Flipkart, and USAA, Nandini shares a powerful perspective on how conversation design is fundamentally changing in the era of large language models.
Together, they explore the shift from rule-based and intent-driven systems to generative, adaptive models - captured in Nandini’s “Legos to Play-Doh” analogy. The conversation focuses on what this transformation means for designers today: moving beyond writing dialogue to shaping system behaviour through tone, guardrails, and governance. They also examine how empathy must now be designed at scale, accounting for emotional context, cultural nuance, and real-world complexity across global audiences.
This episode explores:
- The shift from scripted dialogue to generative, LLM-driven systems
- Designing system behaviour instead of individual prompts
- Building empathy at scale through rules of engagement
- Balancing global standards with deeply local, context-specific design
- Designing for multilingual and culturally diverse markets
- Governance, tone systems, and safety guardrails in high-trust domains
- Empowering designers through tooling, rituals, and shared ownership
This highlights how design is evolving beyond scripts and prompts, and what it truly takes to build trustworthy, human-centered AI at scale. So after listening, the question becomes: how do you design conversational AI systems that balance flexibility with control, while remaining empathetic, culturally aware, and trustworthy at scale?
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Nandini Stocker, Sr.
Design executive and conversation systems leader with over 25 years of experience shaping how AI speaks across 60+ languages, 120 countries, and 50+ industries.
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.