Robustness in Speech Based Interfaces:

Sharing the Tricks of the Trade
A CHI 2002 Workshop

Sunday April 21

Call for Participation

Background

Workshop Goals

Workshop structure

Participants

Organisers

Workshop proposal

Workshop papers

Preliminary schedule

Background

Speech technology has the potential to fundamentally change, in the long term, the way we interact with computers. While currently speech cannot be used universally to replace a keyboard, it is being used successfully and productively in a variety of applications. The key to using speech effectively is that there be a compelling reason to use it in the first place.

Speech is as innate to humans as breathing. We speak to our cats, our dogs and some of us even speak to our plants. While speech is a very natural form of communication for people, its adoption rate has been slow in major commercial computer systems. Part of this may be due to the fact that insufficient usability expertise has gone into the design of many speech systems; many having been created by speech developers instead of HCI experts. Given that speech is not 100% accurate, nor will be in the foreseeable future, a special set of skills and knowledge must be applied to the design of speech interfaces to make them usable. Part of the goal of the workshop is to expand the base of this knowledge through sharing from experience.