Designing Effective Speech Interfaces

Interpretation

The ninth law of interface design is Interpretation: The interface will make reasonable guesses about what the user is trying to do.

Human Factors

Users should not have to guess how a system works or how it will react to their input. The computer should be able to monitor user behavior and make a reasonable guess as to the action or speech the user is trying to apply.

Technology Considerations and Implications

One of the biggest challenges still confronting speech interfaces is that of accuracy. Even though technology has advanced, there are still significant errors in what the computer can recognize. In continuous speech recognition, a common error is computer misinterpretation of what the user says. The more closely the computer can interpret, the more usable the interface. In a discrete speech application, the types of errors are different. But there is still room for the interface to attempt an interpretation of the user's speech or actions based on context.

The more progress that is made in accuracy of speech interfaces, the easier the job will be on the interface. For now, however, the interface must take up the slack by being even more vigilant in interpreting user actions and speech.