May 9, 2012 @ 14:30, Room: 15
Course 29: Hands-Free Interfaces: The Myths, Challenges, and Opportunities of Speech-Based Interaction - Course
Contribution & Benefit: Learn how speech recognition works, what are its limitations and usability challenges, how it could be used to enhance interaction paradigms, and what is the current research and commercial state-of-the-art.
Abstract » Speech remains the "holy grail" of interaction, as this is the most natural form of communication that humans employ. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult modalities to be understood by machines -- despite, and perhaps, because it is the highest-bandwidth communication channel we possess. While significant research efforts, from engineering, to linguistic, and to cognitive sciences, have been spent on improving machines' ability to understand speech, the HCI community has been relatively timid in embracing this modality as a central focus of research. This can be attributed in part to the relatively discouraging levels of accuracy in understanding speech, in contrast with often-unfounded claims of success from industry, but also to the intrinsic difficulty of designing and especially evaluating speech and natural language interfaces. While the accuracies of understanding speech input are still discouraging for many applications under less-than-ideal conditions, several interesting areas are yet to be explored that could make speech-based interaction truly hands-free. The goal of this course is to inform the HCI community of the current state of speech and natural language research, to dispel some of the myths surrounding speech-based interaction, as well as to provide an opportunity for HCI researchers and practitioners to learn more about how speech recognition works, what are its limitations, and how it could be used to enhance current interaction paradigms.