Designed for attendees new to speech technology, this tutorial provides an overview of today’s key speech technologies. What are the major types of speech recognition engines and how do they work? What is the difference between statistical language models and grammars? Do speaker identification and verification really work? How do speech synthesis engines work and how do you specify synthetic voice characteristics? What does a dialogue engine do and how do you manage a user-computer dialogue? What makes intelligent agents intelligent? What are the dimensions of natural language? What’s needed to build a personal assistant? How will speech technologies change our lives in the next 3 years?

Taught by the author of Practical Speech User Interface Design, this session covers the current leading practices in speech user interface design for interactive voice response applications. Drawing from psychology, human-computer interaction, linguistics, and communication theory, this course provides a comprehensive yet concise survey of practical speech user interface (SUI) design, including practice-based and research-based guidance on how to design effective, efficient, and pleasant speech applications. The techniques for designing usable SUIs are not obvious, and to be effective, must be informed by a combination of critically interpreted scientific research and leading design practices.

This session introduces natural language processing (NLP) and its role in speech applications. Learn what natural language is, the statistical language model (SLM) approach to NLP, when and how to use NLP techniques, and how to combine NLP techniques with grammars and directed dialogues to achieve optimal application performance. Additionally, this session covers commercially available natural language tools, research areas, and newer technology such as the IBM Watson Jeopardy system and Apple Siri. This tutorial is aimed at an audience with a general technical background. Experience developing speech applications would be helpful.