The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice [Paperback]

Blade Kotelly (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321154924 | ISBN-13: 978-0321154927 | Publication Date: February 1, 2003 | Edition: 1

Automated speech recognition (ASR) applications are poised to grow at a phenomenal pace. These systems allow you to speak naturally on the phone, while a computer system both understands what you say and answers knowledgeably. We all increasingly experience such applications when we telephone airline or financial companies for information. Other industries experimenting with these systems include automotive, security, and consumer goods companies. The key to the success of these systems is the design and development of effective voice user interfaces (VUIs). This is both an art and a science that requires an understanding of language, user needs, business requirements, and digital technology. This book provides an overview of this emerging field. It explains, both for managers and developers/designers new to VUIs, what the issues, challenges, and opportunities are, and gives a clear sense of what a well-designed system requires. Using real-world examples from successful, large-scale systems, it shows how a good speech recognition system can save a company money, increase customer satisfaction, and even grow revenue.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Most people have experienced an automated speech-recognition system when calling a company. Instead of prompting callers to choose an option by entering numbers, the system asks questions and understands spoken responses. With a more advanced application, callers may feel as if they're having a conversation with another person. Not only will the system respond intelligently, its voice even has personality.

The Art and Business of Speech Recognition examines both the rapid emergence and broad potential of speech-recognition applications. By explaining the nature, design, development, and use of such applications, this book addresses two particular needs:

1. Business managers must understand the competitive advantage that speech-recognition applications provide: a more effective way to engage, serve, and retain customers over the phone.
2. Application designers must know how to meet their most critical business goal: a satisfying customer experience.

Author Blade Kotelly illuminates these needs from the perspective of an experienced, business-focused practitioner. Among the diverse applications he's worked on, perhaps his most influential design is the flight-information system developed for United Airlines, about which Julie Vallone wrote in Investor's Business Daily: "By the end of the conversation, you might want to take the voice to dinner."

If dinner is the analogy, this concise book is an ideal first course. Managers will learn the potential of speech-recognition applications to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, enhance the company brand, and even grow revenues. Designers, especially those just beginning to work in the voice domain, will learn user-interface design principles and techniques needed to develop and deploy successful applications. The examples in the book are real, the writing is accessible and lucid, and the solutions presented are attainable today.

0321154924B12242002

About the Author

Blade Kotelly is the Creative Director of Interface Design for SpeechWorks International, a leading provider of automated speech-recognition software products and services. In addition to United Airlines, he has worked on applications for Apple Computer, E*TRADE, McKesson, Fidelity Investments IBG, FedEx, and others. A frequent conference speaker and university lecturer, Blade has had his work and ideas featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and National Public Radio.

0321154924AB12242002

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (February 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321154924
• ISBN-13: 978-0321154927
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Achieving robust function with a human spin, June 1, 2003

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A. M. Lovell "regular guy" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice (Paperback)

Blade Kotelly is the one person in voice design whose attention to the human possibilities of a well-designed voice user interface provides assurance that humanizing our machines will not mechanize humanity. This treatment does not, however, merely try to convince aspiring designers to make their interfaces sound human. It illustrates how a designer can avoid ambiguity, aim for the most graceful styles of retries and error recovery, and how emotive responses can help to implicitly communicate the system's capabilities and limitations without requiring lengthy, explicit descriptions to be read out.

Though they are sometimes subtle, the issues and solutions outlined here are broadly explained, and this fosters an appreciation of each and leaves readers better equipped to anticipate where the next one may lie.

Kotelly is not delivering a text book which seeks to catalog countless dos and don'ts of design. Rather, he takes what I feel is the proper tack of showing by example how problems arise and listing not one, but a variety of choices a designer could make to avoid the problem. The result is not a series of commandments, but a richly illustrated outline of a well-developed philosophy of design and depiction. The work, I feel, helps the reader to appreciate the impulses that shaped Kotelly's leading work in the field, and to promote in him/her a sense of how they can develop their own affinity for designing systems that work efficiently and are received warmly.

If you truly think that a book will help you break into this field or expand your mastery within it, this is an excellent choice. It will inform you and prompt you to think well beyond the content it directly offers. It is perfect to get you thinking more passionately and expansively of what is possible in voice user interface design.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very lucid; don't be scared off by the subject, February 23, 2003

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice (Paperback)

Speech recognition as a commercial product is still very new. In 1988, when I was first involved with it, the state of the art did not involve real time capability. You had to record the utterance and then analyse it with a computer. Typically, you also had to train the software with the speaker beforehand.

Now, we have commercially available real time, speaker independent products. Some of the largest companies, like United Airlines and ATT, have deployed these, to try and reduce call centre costs, and to improve the user's experience when dialling into such a place. Are you considering installing such software? Of course, you can talk to the vendors. But where can you get objective advice? One possibility is to ask researchers in the field. But they can easily and inadvertantly drown you in jargon, especially if you do not have a technical background. This book attempts to fill that need. You do not need a degree in computer science or maths to understand it.

The book does not explain how speech recognition works. Rather the emphasis is at a higher level: Using it in your workplace. The author gives many lucid examples of this. Basically, he outlines a commonsensical appproach that can be understood by anybody. He explains how not to overburden the user with long utterances full of information, but to take advantage of the context of the conversation to omit unnecessary details. He emphasises thorough testing, with a disciplined scaling up to a real life deployment in a call centre. Something that may well have been omitted in other deployments, leading to users gnashing their teeth in frustration at an obtuse dialog, or at busy phone lines.

He also discusses why companies should regard this as part of their corporate branding, and how to choose an appropriate "noble" voice as part of that branding. I think the "noble" sounds rather pompous, actually. But that's not his fault! It is a standard phrase in this field, and you too might get used to it.