|
 |
15 April 2003 |
Charcoal rock art in Chauvet cave was carbon-dated to 30,000 years ago. But there are doubts: the style of the art suggests it is much more recent than that, and one archaeologist wants the carbon-dating redone by a second lab.
10:34:29 PM 
|
|
Traffic in London has decreased by 17% since the introduction of the congestion charge, according to the architect of the scheme. It will be interesting to see whether the traffic pattern stays like this in Oct-Feb when the weather will deteriorate (or June).
8:24:13 PM
|
|
ENUM plan to give phnone numbers unique (IP-address style) addresses likely to confuse people. "Today when you want your phone to stop bothering you, you unplug it or ignore it and give your friends a private line. Under ENUM, you'd have to configure it".
7:57:57 PM
|
|
Blade Kotelly, who is Creative Director of User Interface Design at SpeechWorks, suggests we aim for a haiku-like elegance, involve Producers as well as Designers, and watch our grammar. The highlights:
Great [speech-recognition] systems do it with an elegance worthy of a haiku; their meaning and impact are clear and immediate, and not a single word is wasted. The more elegant a system is, the more intuitively -- and quickly -- a caller can use it, and the greater value it offers to both clients and callers.
[...]
Most people don't realize how much error correction they do in real conversations. How often do our conversations with real people sound anything like the carefully scripted conversations of a TV drama? On TV and in movies, characters never say "Uh, what? I didn't get that last thing you just said."
[...]
The art of writing the perfect prompt is to convey ideas clearly and concisely. No extra words. No fuzzy language. A well-constructed prompt guides the caller to say only things the recognizer will understand. [...] If, however, the recognizer is looking for a particular word (such as a manufacturer of automobiles), the prompt must direct callers to answer specifically. For example, by having the prompt ask, "What's the automobile manufacturer?" instead of "What type of automobile?" we could minimize the chance that callers would say words such as "van" or "sedan." There are several mistakes commonly made that negatively affect the elegance, speed, and value of the system: providing unnecessary information, using ambiguous language, and not getting callers to focus on the essentials.
[...]
Grammatically correct language (unless it sounds extremely awkward) leaves less opportunity for misunderstanding.
[...]
When designers finally finish getting their ideas on paper, they need someone to produce their work. That's where the producers come in. Showing someone a Design Specification is one thing, but actually using a real system is something else.
And Kotelly's top 5 tips for writing prompts:
-
State what the application will do and how it will work before engaging callers in conversation
-
Design to the caller's level of knowledge at each state in the application, understanding that callers will learn terms and procedures as they use an application
-
Use a consistent sentence structure for all commands within a single prompt
-
Ensure that all prompts should have a conversational tone in language and recordings to convey ideas clearly and simply (ie: give your service a touch of personality)
-
Tell callers only as much as they need to know to make effective decisions -- no more and no less
And the top five mistakes:
-
Getting caught up in the details of the wording of an application before fully understanding its structure. (ie write flowchart, then script)
-
Writing overly verbose prompts (no sense of irony there?)
-
Repeating the initial prompt for the timeout and retry prompts
-
Using language not commonly found in conversation
-
Equating stilted language with formal language
Kotelly's book, The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice: Allconsuming, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
7:40:09 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2003 rodcorp.
|
|
|
