Mobile phones driving the latest innovation in user interaction

Applied Voice Input Output Society spotlights trend at the Mobile Voice Conference

 

San Jose, CA, January 14, 2011: Making it possible to interact effectively with our telephones, computers, and other devices by voice has been a long-time goal of the industries represented by the Applied Voice Input Output Society (AVIOS), a non-profit founded in 1981. With decades of steady progress, the technology has matured to provide the level of support to users that AVIOS has long envisioned. Like other interface technologies that provide new levels of ease-of-use, it is affecting not only the way people use their technology, but the fortunes of companies that connect with those users in many ways.

 

AVIOS recognized that the impetus to the wide adoption of speech recognition and other voice technologies would be driven by mobile phone usage, particularly as those devices did more and more. The devices' other interface modalities are effective, but limited by the size of the device and the need to use it in situations where hands and eyes may be doing double duty.

 

AVIOS's first Mobile Voice Conference, held in 2010, recognized this trend, and it has certainly evolved as expected, with applications such as voice search moving toward the mobile phone becoming a personal assistant where we just say what we want to do or know. The second Mobile Voice Conference is being held in San Jose this month, January 24-26, focusing on this trend and how companies can take advantage of it. See www.mobilevoiceconference.com for the detailed program.

 

Members of AVIOS's Board commented on the trend:

 

"The asymmetrical input-output capabilities of today's smartphones have stimulated the growth in a new class of applications for which the favored input is speech while the favored output is visual.  Users speak to the device, then watch the response."

  - K. W.'Bill' Scholz, President, NewSpeech, LLC, and President, AVIOS

  - Bill.Scholz@comcast.net

 

"In the longer term, the mental model of the mobile phone user is likely to be based on a simple 'user manual'—'Say what you want, or type what you would say.' This model, supported by improved language understanding technology, gets quickly to the user's intent."

  - Bill Meisel, President, TMA Associates, and Executive Director, AVIOS

  - b.meisel@tmaa.com

 

"Rather than finding a stylus so you can touch the individual tiny letters on a minuscule keypad, why not just say what you want by speaking to the mobile phone device?  Remember, each mobile phone device contains a phone that people use to speak and listen.  These handy devices are the future for speech technologies."

  - Jim Larson, Program Co-chair, SpeechTEK Conference

  - jim@larson-tech.com

 

"The mobile phone is often the interface of choice in the developed world, but it is the only interface available to many in the developing world. For the majority of the world, speech access to information over mobile devices will be the primary mode of interaction for many years to come. Evolving speech interfaces such as those highlighted at Mobile Voice can play a key role in connecting the developing world with the information age."

  - Sara Basson, Program Director, Spoken Web Strategy, IBM Research

  - sbasson@us.ibm.com

 

"When we look at the younger generation we realize that the main way they communicate today, manage their life, and are involved in social activities is through their smartphone. Everyone has one, likes it, uses it and speaks to it. A multimodal interface is not intuitive without speech, and thus we are concerned with developing the right speech interface to accommodate these needs. Designing a Voice User Interface which is short, quick and linguistically accurate is crucial for the success of mobile speech applications."

  - Dr. Nava Shaked. CEO, Brit Business Technologies Ltd.

  - nava@business-tech.co.il

 

"Increasingly, consumers are using mobile devices including smartphones, to do self service transactions with airlines, banks, cable companies, retailers and other enterprises.  Form factor limitations and continued improvement in speech technologies make speech a particularly attractive communication mode in this context. Speech can work either on a stand-alone basis or in conjunction with other modes such as mobile web/native mobile applications, video and text messaging."

  - Bruce Pollock, Vice President of Strategic Growth and Planning at West Interactive, a Mobile Voice Conference event sponsor

 - Contact: Mack McKenzie, VP Marketing, West Corporation, CMMcKenzie@west.com

 

"As the technology for intelligent voice interaction with mobile phones matures, it is not only revolutionizing when, where, and how mobile devices are used, but it is also giving people access to technology which might have been unavailable to them in the past due to disabilities, age-related changes, or for economic reasons."

  - Deborah Dahl, Principal, Conversational Technologies

  - dahl@conversational-technologies.com

 

"Voice and soon spoken language processing is a key development that will allow people to effectively use mobile devices as an integral part of their work and social activities."

  - Alexander Rudnicky, Principal Systems Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University

  - air@cs.cmu.edu

 

"The evolution and popularity of smartphones has rapidly changed the way we relate to the world - from how we access information to how we communicate. AVIOS' Mobile Voice Conference is the industry forum for experiencing and participating in this revolution and learning how to take advantage of the opportunities it affords."

  - Roberto Pieraccini, CTO, SpeechCycle

  - roberto@speechcycle.com, (646)826-2336

 

"Speech technology continues to become a part of everyday life, enabling people to get information and take action by using their voice. Microsoft Tellme is taking the lead in delivering speech as part of the natural user interface, giving you a seamless and natural speech experience in your car, in your home, and on your phone."

  - Rob Chambers, principal group program manager at Microsoft Tellme

  - robch@exchange.microsoft.com

 

" Call Centers provide a valuable environment where agents help design and test multimodal customer service applications, which are then available for efficient and easy-to-use self-service by callers with mobile smartphones."

  - Matt Yuschik, PhD, Principal Designer, Multimodal Interfaces, LLC.

  - mjyuschik@gmail.com

 

AVIOS and Bill Meisel's TMA Associates are co-organizers of the Mobile Voice Conference. The primary sponsors of the conference are Microsoft and Openstream. Loquendo and ATX Group are supporting sponsors.

 

About the Mobile Voice Conference: The conference examines practical applications of speech recognition, text-to-speech, audio search, speaker authentication, and other speech technologies, and how they interact with other technologies, such as touch screens. The familiarity with the technology generated by mobile applications is changing expectations of how we deal with machines in general, including the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems we encounter when we call a company's customer service line.

 

About AVIOS: The Applied Voice Input Output Society is a non-profit professional society dedicated to providing education on the development and diffusion of real world applications of speech technology. For more on AVIOS, see www.avios.org.

 

About Bill Meisel and TMA Associates: William Meisel, Ph.D., president, TMA Associates, is publisher and editor of Speech Strategy News, and an independent speech industry consultant since 1991. He's been a professor of EE and CS, division manager of an engineering firm, and founder/CEO of a speech recognition company. See www.tmaa.com.

 

General contacts:

AVIOS: Peggie Johnson, 408-323-1783, Peggie@avios.org

TMA Associates: Bill Meisel, 818-708-0962, b.meisel@tmaa.com