Disclosed herein is a software technology for facilitating an interactive conversational session between a user 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. In one implementation, accessing the created visual conversation application may involve detecting an object and identifying information associated with the detected object.