Usability of Speech Dialog Systems

Before designing a speech application system, three key questions have to be answered: who will use it, why and how often? This book focuses on these high-level questions and gives a criteria of when and how to design speech systems. After an introduction, the state-of-the-art in modern voice user interfaces is displayed. The book goes on to evolve criteria for designing and evaluating successful voice user interfaces. Trends in this fast growing area are also presented.Even economically successful automatic speech dialog systems often enough gain bad reputation in public opinion. Although from a technical point of view this judgment may seem unjustified because of the technical maturing process in recent years. However, this book is based on the fact that it is the usersâ judgments that is the final measure regarding usability and acceptance of any speech dialog system.§It is the aim of this book to share views from experts from industry and academia who look a step ahead, providing their strategies and approaches for the future of user-friendly speech dialog systems.§Contributions spotlight issues such as automatic user classification, uncovering usersâ interaction schemes, speech interaction as part of multimodal user interfaces, relation of subjective and objective data, and the role of voice and style in designing a brand specific acoustic appearance