Disclosed herein is a software technology for facilitating an interactive conversational session between a user (e.g., a client, a patient, etc.) and a digital conversational character. For instance, in one aspect, the disclosed process may involve two primary phases: (1) an authoring phase that involves a first user accessing a content authoring tool to create a given type of visual conversation application that facilitates interactions between a second user and a digital conversational character in an interactive conversational session, and (2) a rendering phase that involves the second user accessing the created visual conversation application to interact with the digital conversational character in an interactive conversational session.