Interface Design for ICT4B

1
Interface Design for ICT4B

• Speech, Dialects, and Interfaces
• Prof. Dan Klein and Prof. Marti Hearst

2
Special Needs of ICT4B

• User population
• Speaks many languages
• Speaks many dialects
• Often does not read, or reads little
• Equipment should be
• Inexpensive
• Low power consumption
• Thus, small screen or no screen

3
Goals for ICT4B Interfaces

• Task-specific rather than general-purpose
  computing
• Shared (multi-person, social) interaction
• Learnable by observation of use

4
Speech-Centric Interfaces

• Together these suggest that speech-centric
  interfaces are more appropriate than
  screen-centric ones.
• Alternatively, we should design interfaces that
  tightly couple speech and screen.
• However

5
Speech-based Interfaces are Difficult to Design

• Speech recognition far from perfect
• Imagine inputting commands w/ the mouse getting
  the wrong result 5-20 of the time
• How to guess the right dialect?
• Speech UIs have no visible state
• Cant see what you have done before or what
  affect your commands have had
• Speech UIs can be hard to learn
• How do you explore the interface? how do you find
  out what you can say?

6
Speech UI Problems

• Difficult to design real dialogues
• Certain commands only work when in specific
  states
• Deep hierarchies (aka voice mail hell)
• Verbose feedback wastes time/patience
• only confirm consequential things
• use meaningful, short cues
• Interruption
• half-duplex communication (i.e., no barge-in
  support)
• Speech is memory-intensive

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SpeechActsGuidelines for Speech UIs

• Speech interface to computer tools
• Yankelovich, Levow, and Marx 1995
• email, calendar, weather, stock quotes
• Establish common ground shared context
• make sure people know where they are in the
  conversation

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SpeechActsGuidelines for Speech UIs

• Pacing
• recognition delays are unnatural, so make it
  clear when this occurs
• barge-in lets user interrupt like in real
  conversations
• tapering of prompts
• progressive assistance short errors messages at
  first, longer when user needs more help
• implicit confirmation include confirm in next
  command

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A travel dialog Communicator
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Call routing ATT HMIHY
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A tutorial dialogue ITSPOKE
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User-Centered Design

• Focus on the goals of the intended users
• Identify the tasks to accomplish those goals
• Use interative design, keeping the users in the
  loop.