VoiceWeb: Spoken Dialogue Interfaces and Usability

Abstract

This chapter presents the state-of-the-art in usability issues and methodologies for VoiceWeb interfaces. It undertakes a theoretical perspective to the usability methodology and provides a framework description for creating and testing usable content and applications for conversational interfaces. The methodologies and their uses are discussed as well as certain technical issues that are of specific importance for each type of system. Moreover, it discusses the hands-on approaches for applying usability methodologies in a spoken dialogue web application environment, including methodological and design issues, resource management, implementation using existing technologies for usability evaluation in several stages of the design and deployment. Finally, the challenging usability issues and parameters of the emerging advanced speech-enabled web interfaces are presented.