A Spoken Dialog System to Access a Newspaper Web Site

In this paper we propose the use of multilingual multichannel dialogue systems to improve the usability of web contents. In order to improve both the communication and the portability of those dialogue systems we propose the separation of the general components from the application-specific, language-specific and channel-specific aspects. This paper describes the multilingual dialogue system for accessing web contents we develop following this proposal. It is particularly focused two main components of the system: the dialogue manager and the natural language generator.

Applied Intelligence, 2006

2004

Spoken dialogue systems allow users to interact with computer-based applications such as databases and expert systems by using natural spoken language. The origins of spoken dialogue systems can be traced back to Artificial Intelligence research in the 1950s concerned with developing conversational interfaces. However, it is only within the last decade or so, with major advances in speech technology, that large-scale working systems have been developed and, in some cases, introduced into commercial environments. As a result many major telecommunications and software companies have become aware of the potential for spoken dialogue technology to provide solutions in newly developing areas such as computer-telephony integration. Voice portals, which provide a speech-based interface between a telephone user and Web-based services, are the most recent application of spoken dialogue technology. This article describes the main components of the technology-speech recognition, language understanding, dialogue management, communication with an external source such as a database, language generation, speech synthesis-and shows how these component technologies can be integrated into a spoken dialogue system. The article describes in detail the methods that have been adopted in some well-known dialogue systems, explores different system architectures, considers issues of specification, design, and evaluation, reviews some currently available dialogue development toolkits, and outlines prospects for future development.

Proc. of ICSLP, 2000

In this paper we summarize our experience at LIMSI in the design, development and evaluation of spoken language dialog systems for information retrieval tasks. This work has been for the most part carried out in the context of several European and international projects. Evaluation plays an integral role in the development of spoken language dialog systems. While there are commonly used measures and methodologies for evaluating speech recognizers, the evaluation of spoken dialog systems is considerably more complicated due to the interactive nature and the human perception of performance. It is therefore important to assess not only the individual system components, but the overall system performance using objective and subjective measures.

The user's interaction with internet information services is usually based on dealing with a graphical interface, but because of the improvements in speech technology over the last years more and more phone speech information services appear. In March 2004 the W3C published the VoiceXML 2.0 recommendation to bring the advantages of web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response information systems. Although classical modeling strategies for building graphical user interfaces can also be used for their voice based counterparts, there are certain aspects where voice response systems need special attention. For example, an intuitive navigation structure is crucial due to limited possibilities in expressing information to the user. We present a systematic development process which integrates conceptual modeling, rapid prototyping, simulation and system documentation for voice based information services. Following this approach we have implemented a voice based interface for an e-Democracy portal which will be used as an example within this paper.

Chatbot Research and Design, 2020

This paper lays the foundation for a new delivery paradigm for web-accessible content and functionality, i.e., conversational interaction. Instead of asking users to read text, click through links and type on the keyboard, the vision is to enable users to "speak to a website" and to obtain natural language, spoken feedback. The paper describes how state-of-the-art chatbot technology can enable a dialog between the user and the website, proposes a reference architecture for the automated inference of site-specific chatbots able to mediate between the user and the website, and discusses open challenges and research questions. The envisioned, bidirectional dialog paradigm advances current screen reader technology and aims to benefit both regular users in eyes-free usage scenarios as well as visually impaired users in everyday scenarios.

Interspeech, 2007

Currently there are no dialog systems that enable purely voice-based access to the unstructured information on websites such as Wikipedia. Such systems could be revolutionary for non-literate users in the developing world. To investigate interface issues in such a system, we developed VoicePedia, a telephone-based dialog system for searching and browsing Wikipedia. In this paper, we present the system, as well as a user study comparing the use of VoicePedia to SmartPedia, a Smartphone GUI-based alternative. Keyword entry through the voice interface was significantly faster, while search result navigation, and page browsing were significantly slower. Although users preferred the GUI-based interface, task success rates between both systems were comparable-a promising result for regions where Smartphones and data plans are not viable.

Proceeding of Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. ICSLP '96, 1996

Dialog management is of particular importance in telephone-based services. In this paper we describe our recent activities in dialog management and natural language generation in the LIMSI RAIL-TEL system for access to rail travel information. The aim of LE-MLAP project RAILTEL was to assess the capabilities of spoken language technology for interactive telephone information services. Because all interaction is over the telephone, oral dialog management and response generation are very important aspects of the overall system design and usability. Each dialog is analysed to determine the source of any errors (speech recognition, understanding, information retreival, processing, or dialog management). An analysis is provided for 100 dialogs taken from the RAILTEL field trials with naive subjects accessing timetable information.

… Conference on Spoken …

We present findings from the long-term study of a speech-based bus timetable system. After the deployment of the prototype system we have collected data from real usage for 30 months. In addition, we have conducted usability tests to get subjective ratings of the pilot system. The comparison of these evaluations shows that the results obtained with usability tests differ significantly from those gained from the real usage, and the data of the initial use differs significantly from the data collected after that. For example, the differences in help requests, interruptions, speech recognition rejections, silence timeouts, and repeat requests are highly significant, and in some cases, such as explicit quit requests, enormous (65% versus 3%).

In spoken dialog systems, information must be presented sequentially, making it difficult to quickly browse through a large number of options. Recent studies have shown that user satisfaction is negatively correlated with dialog duration, suggesting that systems should be designed to maximize the efficiency of the interactions. Analysis of the logs of 2000 dialogs between users and nine different dialog systems reveals that a large percentage of the time is spent on the information presentation phase, and thus there is potentially a large pay-off to be gained from optimizing information presentation in spoken dialog systems. This article proposes a method that improves the efficiency of coping with large numbers of diverse options by selecting options and then structuring them based on a model of the user’s preferences. This enables the dialog system to automatically determine trade-offs between alternative options that are relevant to the user and present these trade-offs explicitly. Multiple attractive options are thereby structured such that the user can gradually refine her request to find the optimal trade-off. To evaluate and challenge our approach, we conducted a series of experiments that test the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Experimental results show that basing the content structuring and content selection process on a user model increases the efficiency and effective- ness of the user’s interaction. Users complete their tasks more successfully and more quickly. Furthermore, user surveys revealed that participants found that the user-model based system presents complex trade-offs understandably and increases overall user satisfaction. The experiments also indicate that presenting users with a brief overview of options that do not fit their requirements significantly improves the user’s overview of available options, also making them feel more confident in having been presented with all relevant options.