Adopting a consistent “sound and feel”

Designing prompts

When designing prompts, you should choose one prompt style and use it consistently throughout your application. (See Adopting a terse or verbose prompt style.) In general, you should try to use the present tense and active voice for all prompts. For example, use:

System: Transfer how much?

rather than:

System: Amount to be transferred?

Unless there is a clear design goal to the contrary, you should adopt a consistent voice for your application, whether you use recorded or synthesized prompts. (See Creating recorded prompts.)

Standardizing valid user responses

Users master applications more quickly when they can predict what responses are valid. For example, if you allow positive responses of “Yes,” “Okay,” and “True” to one yes/no question, you should allow the same responses for all yes/no questions in your application. You can accomplish this by using the built-in types or reusing your own grammars. (See Reusing dialog components.)