Designing Effective Speech Interfaces

Automobile Applications

There seems to be no end to the activities we would like to conduct in our cars. We already talk on the phone, and now we can check our satellite position or even surf the Internet. Many of these automobile applications are similar to handheld devices in that they have limited screen space. But safety is an even greater issue. Whenever we take our eyes off the road or our hands off the steering wheel, we increase the likelihood of an accident. Speech technology will help in this eyes-busy, hands-busy environment by allowing us to listen and talk rather than use hands or eyes to operate devices.

“Voice-recognition technology will develop to the point where, if you're driving to an island you can just say, ‘What's the ferry schedule?’ to get oral answers from an in-car Web link.”

Tim Berners-Lee, credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web

For example, years ago J.R. Davis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed two applications—Direction Assistance and Backseat Driving—that used synthetic speech to give driving directions. Using the first application, drivers would enter an origin and a destination. The application would use synthesized speech to provide directions. The second application was the successor to the first and could automatically determine an origination location so that drivers would receive directions based on wherever they were at the time. Several commercial programs now provide even more robust functionality. They use ...