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Until automatic speech recognition becomes such a common component of the human-machine interface that it can be applied generally as a keyboard is used today, the technology will probably be reserved for highpayoff applications. Such applications, especially those that are telephony-based, provide a means for access that presents the company’s image to the public or its customers. Whether the application takes orders for products or simply provides information, the owner must consider any customer interface to be mission-critical. For this reason, the approach to applications development must be a least-risk, conservative method.

The Development Team

The team assembled for building an ASR application needs specialized skills that members of the IS group may not possess. The team therefore must include several people not typically present on an applications development team.

Users or a Proxy for the Users. If the application is intended for internal use in the organization, a sample of users should participate in the development of a vocabulary, the design of an appropriate dialog (for an interactive application), and the testing of the application. If the application is intended for use by external parties, a proxy for those parties should participate. The proxy must be familiar with the business application and the usual dialogs conducted with external parties (e.g., customers).

A Corporate Public Relations Representative. For an application to be used by external parties, a representative of corporate public relations should participate to review the dialog and ensure that it conveys an appropriate image of the organization.

Technical Architects. Technicians familiar with the operation and architecture of the hardware elements of the system should design the interfaces among the components. Components may include:

  An ASR server.
  A local area network.
  An lVR system.
  The telephone interface to the IVR system.
  A host-resident database for supplying information.
  Telephone line interfaces.

Technicians are needed to design the architecture, supervise installation and testing, and assist in expansion from pilot systems to full rollout.

Application Designers. These systems analysts design the application from a software perspective and continue with the iterative design cycle until the application is implemented. One of the application designers may be the project leader.

Linguistic Analyst. An interactive ASR application depends on an unambiguous dialog between the speaker and the system. Not only must the message to the speaker be understood, but also it must not be misunderstood.

The linguist works with the users to design the dialog. In addition, the linguist helps to design any specialized vocabulary, specify words or phrases that may need to be spotted, and adapt the system for any regional accents or language usage.

Programmers. Programmers are needed to create the data base interfaces to the host data base and, depending on the amount of customization required, to modify or enhance the programs that directly interface to the ASR system.

The ASR system provider may provide the personnel needed to develop initial applications and concurrently train IS staff members to support the application and develop later applications. Some companies may find it best to buy a turnkey system and continuing maintenance from the ASR provider.

Six-Step Development Process

The iterative development process described here assumes that the application is a telephony-based system for providing information from a database to customers. ASR applications are particularly suited to development through incremental prototyping — a technique that provides incremental feedback to the application requester and supports joint application development (JAD) approaches.

At each stage of prototype development, the system requester, simulating a user, is asked to evaluate the dialog provided by the system. This evaluation usually results in changes that grow fewer as the application converges on satisfactory results.


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