Towards a tool for the subjective assessment of speech system interfaces (SASSI)

Applications of speech recognition are now widespread, but user-centred evaluation methods are necessary to ensure their success. Objective evaluation techniques are fairly well established, but previous subjective techniques have been unstructured and unproven. This paper reports on the first stage of the development of a questionnaire measure for the Subjective Assessment of Speech System Interfaces (SASSI). The aim of the research programme is to produce a valid, reliable and sensitive measure of users' subjective experiences with speech recognition systems. Such a technique could make an important contribution to theory and practice in the design and evaluation of speech recognition systems according to best human factors practice. A prototype questionnaire was designed, based on established measures for evaluating the usability of other kinds of user interface, and on a review of the research literature into speech system design. This consisted of 50 statements with which respondents rated their level of agreement. The questionnaire was given to users of four different speech applications, and Exploratory Factor Analysis of 214 completed questionnaires was conducted. This suggested the presence of six main factors in users' perceptions of speech systems: System Response Accuracy, Likeability, Cognitive Demand, Annoyance, Habitability and Speed. The six factors have face validity, and a reasonable level of statistical reliability. The findings form a userful theoretical and practical basis for the subjective evaluation of any speech recognition interface. However, further work is recommended, to establish the validity and sensitivity of the approach, before a final tool can be produced which warrants general use

Multi-session group scenarios for speech interface design

When developing adaptive speech-based multilingual interaction systems, we need representative data on the user's behaviour. In this paper we focus on a data collection method pertaining to adaptation in the user's interaction with the system. We describe a multi-session group scenario for Wizard of Oz studies with two novel features: firstly, instead of doing solo sessions with a static mailbox, our test users communicated with each other in a group of six, and secondly, the communication took place over several sessions in a period of five to eight days. The paper discusses our data collection studies using the method, concentrating on the usefulness of the method in terms of naturalness of the interaction and long-term developments

The development and implementation of a single-line intelligent digital telephone answering unit on a personal computer

ThesisCommercial telephone answering machines are limited to some extent by one or more of the following factors: • limited facilities • difficult to upgrade • nonstandard telephone interfacing • expensive • lack of user-friendliness • lack of dialogue and intelligence The purpose of this study is to design an intelligent digital telephone system which will overcome as many of the above-mentioned problems as possible. The following features are proposed and will be discussed: The use of a commonly available, but powerful, personal computer processor and memory instead of the elementary and rigid processor and magnetic tape storage units of the commercial telephone answering machine . This allows the quick storage and retrieval of digitized messages, each with its individual name, time and date stamp. Using the personal computer's hardware and not duplicating the processor and memory units allows a more cost-effective system upgrade. Upgrades mainly consist of software changes and minor hardware changes. This means that an upgrade does not implicate a total hardware redesign. Standards as prescribed by the local switching network standards and the Department of Post and Telecommunications, apply to this design and are applicable for licensing of the product. It is evident that the cost of this project and design is kept minimal by not duplicating expensive components like the microprocessor and the memory units, although these are used in the design. In this respect upgrades are software orientated to further limit the costs. The personal computer is equipped with a display which allows the user to make easy selections in order to execute the required instructions or to obtain information by using the help functions. This real-time help function eliminates the need for a user manual. Dialogue between user and personal computer over the telephone network offers a simple method of delivering information without the need for any extra equipment such as modems, keyboards or display units. The software used on the personal computer is designed in such a way that the system is intelligent and capable of decision making. Communication from the public telephone network is possible by using the telephone keypad and Dual Tone Multifrequency (DTMF) signalling

Alcohol Language Corpus

The Alcohol Language Corpus (ALC) is the first publicly available speech corpus comprising intoxicated and sober speech of 162 female and male German speakers. Recordings are done in the automotive environment to allow for the development of automatic alcohol detection and to ensure a consistent acoustic environment for the alcoholized and the sober recording. The recorded speech covers a variety of contents and speech styles. Breath and blood alcohol concentration measurements are provided for all speakers. A transcription according to SpeechDat/Verbmobil standards and disfluency tagging as well as an automatic phonetic segmentation are part of the corpus. An Emu version of ALC allows easy access to basic speech parameters as well as the us of R for statistical analysis of selected parts of ALC. ALC is available without restriction for scientific or commercial use at the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals

Voice Command Controller

Signal processing technology has been strongly developed and it has attracted interest from scientists and engineers around the world from the last decade. Speech synthesis and speech recognition are particular topic in the field that have been widely used and developed in many different area such as business, controlling, education and entertainment. The project\u27s main objective is to study and develop an application program with the Speech SDK through design and implementation of Tele-Control system based on the commercial product of National Semiconductor: Carrier-Current Transceiver (LM 1893) and Speech development kit (Speech SDK4.0) from Microsoft Corporation. The project is suitable to be used in restricted areas where space, wiring, decoration and signal interference are issues of concerned. Speech SDK is an interesting and useful tool in helping develop a Voice application programs. In this project, the user can use voice command interact with the control program to control a remote device. In conjunction with hardware modification, extra function can be added to the program such as controlling camera, video capture and position control buttons on the environment map, the project will be suitable for security purposes

Telephony-based email application

The aim of this project is to provide user to gain access of telephony services such as placing an outgoing calls, answering calls, playing back an announcement to the callers, recording caller\u27s messages, playing back recorded messages and finally establishing a dial up connection to send the recorded message to an e-mail address. To do that, the application will be implementing and combining some of Windows Application Programming Interface (API) functions as follows : 1. Telephony Programming Interface (TAPI) ver. 1.4. 2. Multimedia Control Interface (MCI Visual Basic 6\u27s Multimedia control). 3. Remote Access Service (RAS API) 4. Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI Visual Basic 6\u27s MAPI control). 5. Windows Sockets (Visual Basic 6\u27s WinSocks control)

The audio-graphical interface to a personal integrated telecommunications system

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1984.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-88).The telephone is proposed as an environment for exploring conversational computer systems. A personal communications system is developed which supports multi-modal access to multi-media mail. It is a testbed for developing novel methods of interactive information retrieval that are as intuitive and useful as the spoken word. A personalized telecommunications management system that handles both voice and electronic mail mess.ages through a unified user interface is described. Incoming voice messages are gathered via a conversational answering machine. Known callers are identified with a speech recognition unit so they can receive personal outgoing recordings. The system's owner accesses messages over the telephone by voice using natural language queries, or with the telephone keypad. Electronic mail messages and system status are transmitted by a text-to-speech synthesizer. Local access is provided by a touch sensitive screen and color raster display. Text and digitized voice messages are randomly accessible through graphical ideograms. A Rolodex-style directory permits dialing-by-name and the creation of outgoing recordings for individuals or mailing lists. Note: A 3/4 inch color U-matic video cassette accompanies this thesis, it is five minutes in length, and has an English narrative.by Barry Michael Arons.M.S.V.S