Jump-start your knowledge in the field of voice user interface design! This session is designed to quickly get those new to VUI design up-to-speed so they can make the most of the Principles of VUI Design track at the conference. This tutorial will illustrate why VUI design is the make-or-break factor for speech applications and how to make smart design decisions from Day 1. Learn how to encourage customers to accept and use speech automation by focusing on the perceptions and reactions of end users throughout the design process. This tutorial will cover the basics in VUI design: writing effective prompts; creating efficient, no-nonsense call flows; and using evaluation techniques to learn what real customers think. 

Designed for attendees new to the speech technology area, this tutorial provides an overview of today’s key speech technologies. What are the major differences between dictation and conversational recognition engines? Should you use statistical language models (SLMs) or speech grammars, and do they need semantic tags? Should you use concatenative or parameter-based speech synthesis engines? Do speaker identification and verification really work? Is there a need for touchtone recognition in interactive voice response systems? Who drives the speech dialogue? The user, the computer, or both? Where can natural language processing technologies such as natural language recognition, machine translation, response generation, and summarization be used today? Can speech technologies be embedded in mobile devices, or do they require a backend server? Should you use POTS, VoIP, or some other communication strategy? Untangle the voice standards alphabet: VoiceXML, SSML, SRGS, CCXML, PLS, and SCXML.

This course will arm you with guiding principles and best practices for writing grxml grammars. We will begin with a quick overview of grxml structure so we can analyze sample grammars. Plus, we’ll examine some cases where applying best practices really isn't best (there's always a loophole!). We will consider grammars throughout the design, development, testing, and tuning of speech applications. Once you have basic grammars down, how can you add cool, advanced stuff to further constrain your grammar and optimize recognition? This course is for VUI designers, developers, managers, analysts, QA specialists, and others who want to better understand how to use grammars to boost performance of their speech applications.

VUI designers often have to justify their design decisions to clients, peers, management, and others. But what makes a compelling argument for a user experience design? How do you explain user behavior and preferences? How do you know what to prioritize? This course will show you how to make the best use of available research or do some research of your own quickly and under the radar! This session for advanced VUI designers will focus on fast but effective techniques for gathering data in social psychology, interpersonal communication, and service delivery as a basis for making design decisions, responding to feedback, and communicating with clients.

Natural language processing is being used in more applications to support increasingly sophisticated speech dialogues. This tutorial will introduce natural language processing and its role in speech applications. Attendees will learn what natural language is; techniques for processing natural language; how to use statistical language models (SLMs) and speech grammars with semantic tags for processing natural language; and about emerging standards and research and their roles in future applications. Attendees will have the opportunity to develop tagged grammars illustrating the techniques discussed in the tutorial.

Methods for tuning speech applications have grown and evolved within the industry. Just as holistic views of the application replaced narrow efforts focused only on the recognition engine, the newest approaches step back even further from the engine and examine caller success from dialing to hangup. This course will teach you how to manage a successful tuning project to get maximum value from your speech applications. Topics include setting tuning objectives, understanding caller behavior and intent, measuring disatisfiers and inefficiencies, and identifying the highest impact tuning opportunities. Using actual case studies and class exercises, the course will cover a framework and methodology that you can use to manage both in-house and vendor-partner tuning projects.

This course focuses on the aspects of design that need to be considered when creating a multimodal application, such as user modality preference, conflicting mental models, variable usage environments, and technology limitations. This session will cover the successes and failures discovered during the design process for a multimodal application that allowed mobile phone users to order accessories over the phone. The session will also explore the challenges even an experienced GUI or VUI designer faces when attempting to design an effective, user-friendly multimodal application.

VUI designers and their clients recognize the importance of collecting user input and including it in the process of designing voice user interfaces to speech applications. For many organizations, usability testing has become a required part of the design process, but usability tests are not always practical or even warranted. How do you evaluate a speech application from a user-centered perspective when usability testing isn’t feasible? This course presents a range of methods and techniques for evaluating speech applications beyond standard usability testing. Learn how to quickly measure the important aspects of user behavior and perception to make fast and
effective improvements to your voice user interface. Discover which evaluation techniques will provide the best data for your situation and how to build continuous opportunities for evaluation into your design and development process. This course is intended for VUI designers, developers, and managers who want to learn how to make data-based decisions about their speech applications.

Just in time for the elections, here is an application that blocks automated telephone calls. This workshop is for people who understand VoiceXML and want to learn about its companion language, CCXML, also known as voice browser call control. CCXML provides greatly enhanced telephony capabilities and integrates with VoiceXML to provide more powerful applications. In this workshop, we'll discuss the basic concepts of CCXML and then build a "stop rude calls" application that intercepts incoming phone calls to determine if they're from a live person. Bring your laptop and take home the “strop rude calls” application for possible extension into a call routing or answering machine.

Join us for an informative session covering the A to Z of speaker biometrics. We’ll look at technology, applications, and markets. Along the way we’ll experience what it is like to use the technology and answer questions, such as these:

• How do speaker biometrics work?
• Can a tape recorder fool a speaker-verification system?
• Can a professional mimic fool these systems?
• How do speaker biometrics compare with other biometrics?
• Who is using it? And why?
• How should I explain the system to my customers/employees?
  

This session presents no-nonsense concepts and real-life examples of what works!