Interfaces that talk and listen are populating computers, cars, call centers, and even home appliances and toys, but voice interfaces invariably frustrate rather than help. In Wired for Speech, Clifford Nass and Scott Brave reveal how interactive voice technologies can readily and effectively tap into the automatic responses all speech -- whether from human or machine -- evokes. Wired for Speech demonstrates that people are "voice-activated": we respond to voice technologies as we respond to actual people and behave as we would in any social situation. By leveraging this powerful finding, voice interfaces can truly emerge as the next frontier for efficient, user-friendly technology.Wired for Speech presents new theories and experiments and applies them to critical issues concerning how people interact with technology-based voices. It considers how people respond to a female voice in e-commerce (does stereotyping matter?), how a car's voice can promote safer driving (are "happy" cars better cars?), whether synthetic voices have personality and emotion (is sounding like a person always good?), whether an automated call center should apologize when it cannot understand a spoken request ("To Err is Interface; To Blame, Complex"), and much more. Nass and Brave's deep understanding of both social science and design, drawn from ten years of research at Nass's Stanford laboratory, produces results that often challenge conventional wisdom and common design practices. These insights will help designers and marketers build better interfaces, scientists construct better theories, and everyone gain better understandings of the future of the machines that speak with us.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"With *Wired for Speech*, Clifford Nass and Scott Brave have done a brilliant job of tracing the implications of the intensely social nature of speech for the burgeoning arena of voice interface systems. Anyone interested in these systems would do well to read this book."--Robert B. Cialdini, Arizona State University, author of *Influence: Science and Practice*
"I found *Wired for Speech* absolutely fascinating, full of amazing insights. It tells us that the more we are forced to learn how to interact with computers, the more we learn about the most human part of ourselves: that we are not only the masters but the slaves of speech."--Robert MacNeil, coauthor, *Do You Speak American?*
"This is a deeply insightful and immensely useful tour of what is sure to become the most important human-machine interface. As someone who thought he knew all about speech interaction, I was nonetheless surprised again and again as I read through it. Remember *2001*? Well, if Hal's fictional designers had read *Wired for Speech*, Hal not only would have brought his ship's crew back alive, he would have delivered a flawless Academy Award speech as well!"--Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future
"Should a computer refer to itself as 'I'? Questions such as these are philosophical, with implications that range from the social to the psychodynamic. In this dense and fascinating work, they are treated empirically: in a series of systematic investigations, the voice of the machine emerges as a new evocative object for thinking about how people actively draw the line between human and artificial. A compelling contribution to our understanding of computer-human relationships -- now and in the years to come."--Sherry Turkle, MIT, author of *The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit* and *Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet*
About the Author
Clifford Nass is Professor, Department of Communication, and Codirector, Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, at Stanford University. He is the author of The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places.
Scott Brave is Chief Technology Officer at Baynote, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding, useful information in every chapter.,
By
This review is from: Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship (Hardcover)
If you're designing voice user interfaces, you should buy this book.
The basic premise of the book is that when a computer has a voice--and it doesn't matter whether the voice is a recorded human or synthesized--people are going to subconsciously interact with the computer as if it is human (bringing their biases about gender, ethnicity, and personality). I bought this book thinking I would skim it for ideas before writing a proposal. The proposal was focused on improving human-computer interaction for a communications device that uses voice (speech recognition) as the input and the output. Well, I skimmed the first couple of chapters and realized that I really should read them more closely. I learned a couple of great nuggets on voice gender that influenced what I would include in the proposal. Then I skimmed the next couple of chapters on personality of voices, realized I should read those more closely, learned a few more nuggets that I knew were going into the proposal. At that point, I realized I needed to read the whole book closely and fast. Luckily, that was not a problem. The book is an easy read. Every chapter talks about an important design issue for voice user interfaces, describes the decisions that a designer could make, then outlines the research that was done, explains what was learned from the research, and discusses the implications of that research for how you should design your interface. In short, this book completely changed the proposal, and I think we have a much better chance of winning the business. Furthermore, I have already identified about 5 major things we can do to improve our exsisting products that I did not know about before reading this book.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Insight,
This review is from: Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship (Paperback)
This is must reading for anyone in e-commerce marketing. The insight that can be gained from this book is amazing.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Speech is the fundamental means of human communication. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
search for gender cues, extroverted voice, speech manifest personality, different synthetic voices, introverted voice, computers scapegoats, voice user interfaces, virtual passenger, recording reminders, driver emotion, complete results table, evaluator computer, voice interfaces, personality cues, new media like real people, computer personalities, media equation, car interface, emotion detection, embodied conversational agents, array microphone, voice discrimination, happy drivers, formal written texts, synthetic face Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Gender Stereotyping of Voices, New York, Activating the Human-Computer Relationship, Lamb Chop New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
- Social Psychology (12th Edition) by Shelley E. Taylor on 10 pages
- Social Psychology by Susan T. Fiske on 6 pages
- Outlines & Highlights for Social Psychology by Taylor, Peplau, & Sears (Cram101 Textbook Outlines) by Cram101 Textbook Reviews on 5 pages
- Outlines & Highlights for Social Psychology by Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini (Cram101 Textbook Outlines) by Cram101 Textbook Reviews on 4 pages
- Social Psychology by Elliot Aronson in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 53 books this book cites
- Multilingual Speech Processing by Tanja Schultz in Back Matter
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Listmania!
|
|
