Speaking of Wikipedia, here is a fun interaction design demo for some students to build:
- Build a kiosk with a PC and a nice microphone. (Maybe a push-to-talk button if necessary.)
- Hook up speech recognition software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
- Write an applet that receives the spoken text, parses out filler tex, looks up key phrases in Wikipedia and “formats” it for output to speech
- Have a text-to-speech synthesizer dictate the introductory paragraph of the Wikipedia article.
Then videotape some interactions:
Human: Computer, tell me about 419 scams
Computer: Advance fee fraud, often also known as the Nigerian money transfer fraud, Nigerian scam or 419 scam after the relevant section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that it violates, is a fraudulent scheme to extract money from victims after making them believe they will get an immense fortune. Victims are requested to pay an upfront fee before their purported fortune is released.Human: Tell me more
Computer: These scams have come to be associated in the public mind with Nigeria due to the massive proliferation of such confidence tricks from that country since the mid-eighties, although they are often also carried out in other African nations, including Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, [...]Human: (interrupting) That’s enough, thank you.
Computer: You’re welcome.Human: Computer, tell me about Archaeopteryx
Computer: Archaeopteryx, from the Late Jurassic of Germany, is the earliest and most primitive known bird. The discovery of the first intact specimen, Archaeopteryx lithographica, in 1861, two years after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, set off a firestorm of debate about evolution and the role of transitional fossils that endures to this day.Human: Computer, tell me about RSI [This is a topic with several articles.]
Computer: I have nine topics about RSI. Do you mean Repetitive strain injury, a disorder affecting bone and muscle from repetitive movement? Or…
Human: (interrupting) Yes.
Computer: Repetitive strain injury, also called repetitive stress injury or typing injury, is an occupational overuse syndrome affecting muscles, tendons and nerves in the arms and upper back. It occurs when muscles in these areas are kept tense for very long periods of time, due to poor posture and/or repetitive motions.Human: Computer, what happend in 1521?
You get the idea. Bonus points if you make it work well over the phone. And if you get William Shatner to play the human.
Of course this mostly demo stuff. It will always be easier for humans to interact with machines primarily using hands and eyes, not voice and ears (as long as eyes and hands are available). And the human I/O ports of voice and hearing are certainly under-exploited today.)
Nevertheless, building Captain Kirk’s computer would be a cool and funny demo and a fun interaction research project. [Has anyone done this yet?]
