In this episode of the CDI Expert Series: Unprompted, we sit down with Grace Hughes, Conversation Design Director at Accenture Song, to explore what it really takes to grow, scale, and sustain a conversation design practice inside complex organizations. Drawing on her experience across multidisciplinary teams, Grace shares insights into how the role has evolved from scripting flows to shaping product behaviour in AI-driven systems.
The episode highlights how large language models are changing the work of conversation designers, from controlling dialogue to defining principles, guardrails, and trust across non-deterministic interactions. The conversation also highlights the systems thinking, collaboration, and governance required to maintain quality, consistency, and user confidence at scale, while keeping conversation design human-centered and resilient in enterprise environments.
This episode explores:
- How the conversation designer role has changed in the age of LLMs
- Building and operating a Conversation Design Center of Excellence
- Maintaining quality and consistency at scale
- Designing for trust, transparency, and user confidence
- The realities of shipping conversational AI in complex enterprise environments
- The often invisible work behind successful conversational products
- Principles for scaling practices while preserving human-centered design
This episode is about how conversation design is maturing as a discipline and what it takes to build a practice that can scale without losing its soul. So after listening, the question becomes: how do you grow a conversation design practice that scales effectively, remains resilient, and builds trust - without losing its human-centered soul?
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Grace Hughes
Conversation Design Director
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.