Conversational AI | think moto

Albi wins two more awards at the German Brand Award 2026

Posted on 26 June 20267 July 2026 by think moto

Albi shows how brands move beyond visibility to become conversational in the age of AI.

We’re proud to celebrate a double win at the German Brand Awards 2026 for Albi. Developed in collaboration with Bildungsforum Handwerk, our AI-powered career guidance coach was recognised as a Winner in the categories Best AI Project of the Year and Brand Communication – Digital Solutions & Apps.

Rethinking career guidance

Albi is an AI-powered career guidance coach for students in grades 8 to 11. Together with Bildungsforum Handwerk, we developed a dialogue-based brand experience that supports young people in exploring career paths in the skilled trades.

Instead of relying on information delivery or traditional career tests, Albi is based on dialogue. The digital coach helps young people discover their interests and strengths, get to know suitable occupational fields, and develop concrete perspectives for apprenticeships and future careers.

Branded AI Agents instead of generic chatbots

Albi is more than a chatbot. The project shows how Branded AI Agents can be created: AI-powered assistants that not only provide information, but offer guidance from within a clearly defined brand personality.

To achieve this, brand strategy, brand voice, conversational design, visual identity, and user experience design were combined into an integrated brand system. Language, behavior, design, and technology follow the same principles, creating a consistent experience across all interactions.

What convinced the jury

In its statement, the jury emphasizes that career guidance in the skilled trades often does not fail because of a lack of information, but because of the way people are addressed.

The jury particularly recognized the interplay of conversational design, visual identity, and responsibly deployed technology:

“Conversational design, visual identity, and technological restraint are closely aligned, giving the system a clear stance. This creates an AI-powered brand experience that does not simulate closeness, but credibly delivers it through language, design, and the context of use.”

Brand, Experience, and AI

Albi reinforces a belief that is central to our approach: AI creates value when it becomes a meaningful relationship between brand and people—not just another tool.

We would like to thank Bildungsforum Handwerk for their trust, close collaboration, and shared vision of rethinking career guidance.

Why Conversational AI Is Now Part of Corporate Design

Posted on 27 January 202617 June 2026 by Marco Spies

Brands today communicate through interfaces that are becoming increasingly dialog-based: chatbots, voice assistants, conversational interfaces, agentic AI systems, customer service automation, in-car assistants, mobile apps, websites — even products and devices themselves now enable language-based interaction.

When these interfaces do not align with the brand identity, friction occurs. A high-quality visual corporate design paired with a generic, “off-the-shelf” AI voice undermines trust and feels unprofessional.

Conversational Design addresses this gap by:

defining a brand-specific tone of voice, vocabulary, and sentence rhythm
translating brand personality into dialog-based interactions
ensuring consistent brand voice across chatbots and voice interfaces
creating clearer, more intuitive, and emotionally coherent customer experiences
becoming an integral part of the integrated brand experience

In short: Conversational Design translates Corporate Identity (CI) and Corporate Design (CD) into branded conversations.

From Visual to Dialogic Brand Identity

A contemporary brand identity today consists of three interconnected layers: visual identity, linguistic and narrative identity, dialogic identity. Logos, typography, and color systems still define how a brand looks. Purpose, messaging, and tone define how a brand sounds.

The dialogic identity translates both into concrete interactions: How does a digital assistant formulate responses? What attitude is conveyed through short, functional sentences? How are misunderstandings handled? Which recurring micro-phrasings, patterns, and conversational principles shape the interaction?

Conversational AI enables the transition from a static brand system to a living, interactive one. It ensures that every conversation — via chat, voice, or hybrid interfaces — remains consistent with the brand’s personality. Brand identity is no longer just seen or read. It is experienced.

Real-World Applications

For HUGO BOSS, we designed the dialogic layer of the Style Assistant — translating fashion expertise, confidence, and the brand’s elegant directness into a clear, distinctive conversational tone.

For Audi, we developed a Conversational UX Framework that carries the brand’s calm precision and technical clarity into voice-based and assistant-driven systems.

And for a leading German company in testing and certification, we recently designed an entire web interface around dialog-based interaction. Every step begins with a brand-specific conversation rather than traditional UI components. The result: a more intuitive user experience — and a brand that is present and tangible in every interaction.

How to Systematically Embed Conversational Design

At think moto, Conversational Design is now a standard component of our brand processes. Our workflow includes:

1. Conversational Identity Definition

Transferring brand personality to AI
Language, tone, sentence structures
Do’s & don’ts
Response patterns

2. Dialog Modules & UX Patterns

Intent structures
Interaction models
Micro-conversations
Error handling

3. Technical Translation

Prompting guidelines
Training data
Knowledge architectures
Integration into LLMs, voice systems, and chatbots

4. Brand AI Governance

Conversational style guides
Scalable prompt frameworks
Consistency across touchpoints

Conclusion: Brands Must Speak — in Their Own Voice

Conversational interfaces will become one of the most important touchpoints between brands and people in the coming years. Brands that sound generic will lose relevance. Brands that communicate in a distinctive, empathetic, and consistent way will build trust, proximity, and long-term value. Conversational Design is therefore not a technical feature. It is a brand and corporate design discipline.

Human First. AI-Backed.

This is especially true for brands that want to remain relevant in an AI-shaped future.

Learn more about our work with AI-driven branding at thinkmoto.de/en/ai-for-brands or at thinkmoto.de/en/Chatbots.

What ChatGPT and LLMs Mean for How We Build Conversational Interfaces for the Future

Posted on 28 February 202330 November 2024 by Paul Krizsan

Firstly, what are LLMs and ChatGPT? This is not an article about what LLMs (or large language models) and ChatGPT are. If you have been living under a rock and are unfamiliar with these names and terminology then this article written by ChatGPT explaining itself should be a good starting point.

We have been receiving questions from – and participated in many discussions with – our customers and peers about this exciting new tech and wanted to clarify our stance on where we see the opportunities and weaknesses at the current stage, as well as looking forward to a potential hybridized future. The biggest talking point has been the need for conversation design in an increasingly automated and generative world.

From our perspective as experts on conversational interfaces and conversation design we see predominantly two paths that this technology and trend will continue to develop on: the path of consumer-facing applications and the path of the technology as a tool and force multiplier. Neither of which will be eliminating the need for humans behind the wheel, steering the technology, anytime soon.

Hopping on the LLM bandwagon

Broadly speaking, this technology and its implications are spreading at breakneck speed. Many platforms are currently aiming at capitalizing on this goldrush-like state. You may have heard of Microsoft implementing ChatGPT in Bing and Google looking at fusing their proprietary equivalent LaMDa with their own search engine. These search engines follow a trend that companies such as SoundHound have been pursuing for a while, responding to users not in lists of search results, but in concrete answers in the form of natural language.

Other examples of quick wins in this brand new space are bot platforms such as Voiceflow and Cognigy.AI. Here the same purpose of applying LLMs to dynamically generate the system responses or predictable training data for intent training is being used heavily. Some platforms, like Cognigy.AI, are also considering going a step further and looking into the empowerment of conversation designers by allowing the creation of flows and elements through natural language prompts, speeding up the process of setting up new conversations greatly and thus contributing to rapid prototyping capabilities of these low-code platforms. Will these features collate into conversations that are production-ready, about to be rolled out to millions of users, out-of-the-box? Of course not. But they provide a good first framework to expand upon.

Trust in the system and the tech is dwindling

Widely broadcasted anecdotes of tech journalists and influencers, as well as hear-say from colleagues and friends have recently lead to a lot of skepticism when it comes to the current state of the technology. Articles quoting the unsettling feeling, individual erroneous responses and behavioral patterns reinforce negative connotations when it comes to LLMs in todays world. This obviously has a huge negative impact on consumer-facing applications.

Finding an appropriate place for LLMs should not be difficult

Focusing on this new technology as a force multiplies and enablement tool, is therefore the more stable path from our perspective. At least while the technology matures and new, more refreshing experiences for consumer-facing applications improve the publics perception in the mid-term.

On a more immediate and applied note, ChatGPT and LLMs are a great vehicle for innovation and a popular driver for change, but they are tools and will not replace human experts in conversation design. It is a good gap-filler and repetitive tasks but it will not provide the confidence and accuracy of dialogues designed by humans for a while.

The conversation designer is still the agent of change for this new tech

Our workflows in the future could consist of conversation designers laying down the structure of a dialogue, such as the starting point, the goal of the conversation and some checkpoints along the way, with the generative AI or LLM filling the gaps.

In an ideal world we would provide the AI with a purpose and a personality, but no actual dialogue would need to be written by humans. The conversation designer would be focused entirely on the strategic purpose of the interface and the decision on a vector of the personality and tone of voice of the bot.
Paul Krizsan, Director Conversational AI

So while remaining up to date with the current developments of this exciting new technology is vital, we do not share the current ubiquitous sentiment that users are ready for unfettered access to potentially image-harming experiences without having some of the kinks of current LLMs ironed out over the course of 2023.

Are you interested in talking about conversational interfaces, LLMs and how to design for conversations? Talk to us!