www.getdesign.in - My periodic blog exploring the world of business, experience design and interaction, with a smattering of gadgetry and social media. A world where business, people and technology meet.
Let's Fix Things: For over two decades I've been consulting in Communications Design: Everything from business strategy and processes, through to technology, interaction and customer experience. The thoughts here are my own, not necessarily that of my employer.
I have a penchant for spotting patterns and fixing broken user and customer experiences. Even my Bumblebee project hasn't escaped - I've been using Six Sigma techniques to study and predict their behaviour patterns. ☺
BigHand has announced that following a tender and evaluation process, the NHS Yorkshire and Humber Commercial Procurement Collaborative has selected BigHand along with 5 other providers for the provision of digital dictation workflow software and speech recognition technology.
Mobile analyst firmMSearchGroovehas just published the results of a series of tests which show that the mobile search serviceChaChabeat out two other voice-enabled search applications on the iPhone when it comes to search query accuracy.[Update, Ed:a commenter points out that the report was actually sponsored by ChaCha]To test this, the researchers usedGoogle's own mobile applicationandVlingo for iPhone, an app that lets you search both Google or Yahoo. Oddly, they ignoredYahoo's mobile app, which also has voice search built in.
The results of their study aren't entirely shocking: if you want to be understood, ask a human, not a computer.
ChaCha's mobile search servicecan be accessed both by SMS and by calling a toll-free 1-800 number. Since these tests focused on voice search, the phone-in method was used. When using ChaCha, the service identified the queries accurately in 94.4% of the cases and delivered accurate search results 88.9% of the time. Vlingo, which the researchers used to test Yahoo search, only interpreted queries correctly in 72.2% of the cases and delivered accurate results 27.8% of the time. Google, surprisingly, fared worst of all. Their mobile application only understood spoken queries in 16.7% of tests and delivered accurate results 22.2% of the time.
To test the applications, the researchers conducted two rounds of tests using both keyword search and natural language queries where they asked questions using sentences. The queries represented a cross-section of typical mobile searches in categories like navigation, directions, local search, general information, social search, and long-tail search.
It's not all that surprising to find thatChaChaoutperformed the other voice-enabled applications - after all, they have real, live humans on the other end of the line to interpret the spoken questions. What is surprising, though, is how wide the gap is in between the human-powered search and the speech recognition apps,especiallywhen contrasting ChaCha with Google.
British speech recognition technology firm Eckoh is locked in a battle for boardroom control from its largest shareholder.
FT.com reports that 12 percent shareholder OCS Management has criticised executives’ performance and called for a new chairman to be appointed, while Eckoh execs are reportedly urging shareholders to resist its bid for more control and to back their own preferred candidate for the chairman position. Founder and CEO Nik Philpott ominously says he won’t “preside over the company’s death”.
Current chairman Peter Reynolds, who is stepping down at the end of the year, is expected to write to shareholders to drum up support—so far shareholders have been split in their allegiance. According to Reynolds, in initial meetings “OCS…stated that they saw little value in Eckoh’s Speech business but did see uses for the cash held by the company.”
James Golightly, executive director of OCS’ parent company ORA Capital Partners, says the plans is simply to “put a stronger board in place”. Expect fireworks at the company’s shareholder meeting on September 4.
Eckoh, the hosted speech recognition services business, has won a new five year contract worth a minimum £1.5 million to supply services to a major Government Transport & Infrastructure organisation.As part of the deal, Eckoh will provide automated telephone services using its advanced speech recognition technology, with the first service expected to launch later this year.
Promptu Systems Corporation today announced that the Italian version of its fully automated voice-to-text messaging application created for Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) is now available to Italian iPhone owners from Apple's App Store.
Like Promptu's forthcoming ShoutOUT, dettaSMS lets Italian speakers dictate their text messages in fluent, natural speech, instead of typing on the iPhone's touch-screen keypad. Transcribed SMS messages can be reviewed, edited and appended to before being sent.
"dettaSMS is the world's first carrier-deployed voice-to-text SMS iPhone application," said Giuseppe Staffaroni, Promptu's CEO. "To insure privacy, security, and scalability, message transcription is completely automatic -- no human is involved."
dettaSMS is integrated with Telecom Italia Mobile's billing system and built on Promptu's network speech recognition (NSR(TM)) architecture for speed, accuracy and scalability. Promptu's fully automated speech recognition delivers high accuracy, low latency and unparalleled security. User privacy is assured because the real-time voice signal is never processed manually.
Nuance & IBM have announced an agreement they say will help further accelerate innovation in speech recognition solutions for enterprises, consumers and partners worldwide.
As part of this agreement, Nuance has been chosen as IBM’s Preferred Business Partner for speech technologies and related professional services and will complement IBM’s Industry Solutions portfolio.
The two companies will focus on deploying speech technologies for ten industries: automotive, banking, electronics, energy and utilities, healthcare and life sciences, insurance, media and entertainment, retail, telecommunications, and travel and transportation.
Officials with the company say this addition brings the total number of languages its automatic speech recognition, or “ASR” technology supports to 24 and brings its ASR offerings specificallyfor the Scandinavian market tothree languages.
Nuance, a developer of mobile speech recognitionsoftware, has acquired Jott, a company focused on voice-to-text conversion. Jott's Assistant platform lets users write notes, memos, messages, and more using hands-free voice input.
Nuance will integrate Jott's voice-to-text platform in its voice services portfolio. Nuance has also said that it will offer salable Enterprise packages that include Jott and that it will also open Jott's API to third-party partners.
When it comes to designing intuitive, compelling user interfaces, Apple is hands-down the best. Starting with the Mac but most evident with each new generation of “i” products — iMac, iPod and iPhone — the company has demonstrated time and again what so many other device makers and mobile operators have failed to understand: It’s the UI, stupid! So when Apple features Voice Control in commercials for the newest iPhone 3GS, the mobile industry should sit up and take notice.
While the marriage of speech technologies and mobile is under way and irreversible, the transition won’t be a smooth one. First, many undoubtedly remember past speech applications that didn’t work very well. That perception will need to be overcome; implementing speech with simple applications, as Apple has done with Voice Control, is a good way to start. Secondly, some applications are more compatible with speech than others. Selecting and listening to music, for instance, is a natural application; the number of songs and artists is limited, which improves accuracy of speech recognition, and users typically listen to music in a closed environment or with a headset — hopefully with a built-in microphone — which reduces ambient noise and makes it easier for voice commands to be understood.
Much as RIM has carved out a loyal following by developing solutions optimized for email, there is a significant opportunity for operators and OEMs to incorporate speech into mobile devices and applications in a comprehensive way. Apple is leading the way, and others will likely follow suit.
In 2005, the artificial intelligence researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab set out to understand how children learn to talk.
"We wanted to understand how minds work and how they develop and how the interplay of innate and environmental influence makes us who we are and how we learn to communicate."
It was a big task and after years of research, scientists around the world had only begun to scratch the surface of it.
But now, Professor Roy is beginning to get some answers, thanks to an unconventional approach, an accommodating family and a house wired with technology.
And the research may even have kick-backs for everything from robotics to video analysis.
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