VoiceXML Review - Feature Articles

Volume 1, Issue 6 - June 2001

June 2001 Features

ARTICLE ONE

Human Factors and Voice Applications
By Ed Halpern

So it's 2001 and most VoiceXML applications do not quite sound like Space Odyssey's Dave and HAL. But there have been giant leaps in speech recognition technology and voice services over the last several years. While the computer has not attained the sophisticated processing power of a human, if you understand the rules of user interface design and you know the limitations of the technology, you can create effective human-machine speech dialogues.

Go to the article

ARTICLE TWO

User-Centered Deisgn for VoiceXML Applications
By Mike Farley

As a growing audience is exposed to VoiceXML solutions, will people use your applications while they quickly abandon others? Part of the answer to that question depends on how you address human factors issues during application design and development. Your VoiceXML application can avoid or address these issues - and retain more first time users - by implementing human factors wisdom in the context of a UCD (user centered design) process.

Go to the article

ARTICLE THREE

Turning GUIs into VUIs: Dialog Design Principles for Making Web Applications Accessible by Telephone
By Bill Byrne

There's no question that the compatibility of VoiceXML with the familiar and ubiquitous web infrastructure has greatly simplified the implementation of speech recognition applications. Instead of a PC, you can use a telephone; instead of HTML, you can use VoiceXML; instead of a web browser, you can use a "voice browser" (or VoiceXML interpreter). It follows, then, that a reasonable way to develop voice applications is to simply translate web pages into "voice pages", right? Wrong. As we'll see in this article, good VUI design starts with a solid understanding of the most important differences between GUIs and VUIs and ends with the application of linguistic and social principles to the overall development effort.

Go to the article

Be sure to visit the Archives to read articles from past issues of VoiceXML Review.

back to the top