Designing Effective Speech Interfaces

Interview with Candace Kamm

Division Manager

Speech Processing Software & Technology

AT&T Labs—Research

Candace Kamm is Division Manager at AT&T Labs of Speech Processing Software and Technology. She has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from UCLA, a Masters in Audiology from California State University in LA, and a B.A. in Psychology from UC Santa Barbara. She spoke with us about the current state of speech technology and her ideas of the future.

Tell me how you would describe your particular area of expertise.

I focus on trying to make systems work given the imperfect technologies. This requires that you craft the interface carefully.

I've been working in speech technology research organizations since 1984. The area that I am most specifically working on now, and seem to be known for, is user interface for speech systems. I've worked a little bit with speech recognition algorithms and I have worked some with text-to-speech systems, so I know the technologies. I focus on trying to make systems work given the imperfect technologies. This requires that you craft the interface carefully. That's where I have been focusing on. In the research that goes on in my department right now, we are looking at more advanced dialog systems. We have been pushing the envelope, so in this interview I'll probably be going back and forth between what I would do in today's systems versus getting to ...