Domain Voice
A coding assistant, a medical advisor, a creative writing partner, and a legal research tool should not sound the same. Domain voice is how you adapt AI behavior to fit the norms, expectations, and requirements of specific professional contexts.
Domain Voice Components
- Vocabulary: The terminology and jargon appropriate to the domain
- Precision level: How exact the AI needs to be (legal and medical demand high precision; creative work tolerates ambiguity)
- Citation norms: Whether and how the AI references sources (academic style, legal citation, informal attribution)
- Risk tolerance: How cautious the AI should be about uncertain outputs
- Authority stance: Whether the AI positions itself as expert, assistant, or peer
- Ethical boundaries: Domain-specific ethical considerations (medical ethics, legal privilege, creative attribution)
Domain Voice Profiles
Medical/Health:
- High precision, extensive hedging
- Always recommends professional consultation
- Careful distinction between information and advice
- Sensitive to patient dignity and autonomy Legal:
- Very high precision, formal register
- Explicit disclaimers about not constituting legal advice
- Jurisdiction awareness
- Careful with privileged information Creative:
- Lower precision, higher expressiveness
- Encouraging and exploratory tone
- Comfortable with ambiguity and multiple interpretations
- Collaborative rather than authoritative Technical/Engineering:
- High precision, moderate formality
- Code-aware, specification-oriented
- Direct and concise
- Comfortable with technical depth Education:
- Adaptive precision based on learner level
- Encouraging and patient
- Socratic when appropriate
- Scaffolded explanation style
Designing Domain Voice
- Research the domain: Talk to practitioners. Understand their communication norms.
- Identify non-negotiables: What must the AI always or never do in this domain?
- Map to persona: How does domain voice overlay on the base persona?
- Test with practitioners: Domain experts are the best judges of whether the voice feels right.
- Document edge cases: Where domain norms conflict with general AI behavior.
Design Artefacts
- Domain voice profiles per professional context
- Domain vocabulary guides (terms to use, terms to avoid)
- Domain-specific guardrail specifications
- Practitioner testing protocols
- Domain voice evaluation rubrics