Nuance Speech University Course

Voice User Interface Design (VUI) Intensive

DURATION:

4 days in Nuance classroom setting

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Voice user interface designers

Caller experience or human factors engineers
Staff who are responsible for customer satisfaction metrics

PRE-REQUSITES:

Introduction to Speech Recognition (eCampus) or equivalent knowledge

Fundamentals of Voice User Interface Design (eCampus)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The Voice User Interface Design Intensive course combines critical elements of 2 independent courses to
streamline knowledge transfer so participants can successfully design and test speech applications for
maximum caller success. The course draws upon the experience and knowledge of the Nuance Professional
Services team to identify key skills and define best design and testing practices.
This course provides an in-depth look at advanced disambiguation strategies, confirmation dialogs, and
advanced error and universal prompting strategies. Through a series of lectures and extensive hands-on
exercises, participants will gain the experience necessary to effectively design using these powerful dialog
strategies. The course also offers advice on how to respond when design decisions are challenged and
techniques that save you time and rework. Participants gain experience that will raise the level of design work
on the job.
The course also teaches participants how to achieve the promised objectives of speech recognition -improving customer satisfaction while reducing costs. The optimization section teaches participants the role
of the User Experience in maximizing automation rates, ROI, and caller satisfaction. Attendees will learn how
and when to incorporate Usability testing and User Research into their speech application projects. The
relative merits and requirements of the various testing and research methods are explained using real life
case studies taken from Nuance Professional Services engagements.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:

Identify major business requirements, including business goals, motivations, major impacts, localization,
corporate image, DTMF integration requirements, etc.
Identify major caller requirements, including special needs, the caller profile and mental model, etc.
Create a high-level description of the application, including application environment, optimum data
retrieval strategy, TTS requirements, ways to leverage known information for recognition tasks,
verification requirements, system features, etc.
Develop a high-level VUI design strategy that creates a framework for the detailed dialog design and
meets the business, caller, and application requirements.

Develop high-level call flows that meet the business, caller, and application requirements.
Write sample dialogs that apply the design principles and meet the requirements.
Interpret and utilize usability testing data to improve the design.
Develop the detailed Dialog Design Specification that meets the business, caller, and application
requirements, including:
o Specify application logic, including state descriptions, special features, exit and entry states,
etc.
o Define system behavior including universal, error handling, disambiguation, n-best and skiplist
strategies
o Determine the grammar needs and attributes
o Defend design choices
Identify the optimal dialog strategy for confirming caller input (information grouping, 3-tier, explicit, and
implicit confirmation)
List common design mistakes made when creating confirmation dialogs
Create designs utilizing confirmation dialogs according to best practices
Identify dialogs suited for applying N-Best to enhance performance
Avoid making common dialog design mistakes when using N-Best
Create N-Best based dialog designs to enhance application performance
Avoid common error and universal prompting mistakes
Understand why the caller experience affects automation
Identify the key caller experience and usability activities
Create a usability plan to ensure high caller acceptance and automation rates

COURSE OUTLINE/AGENDA:
Introduction
Day 1
Understanding the caller experience
Gathering requirements
Initiating early research
Developing the Requirements Definition document
Defining the business, caller and application requirements
Designing the high-level VUI design strategy
Defining the metaphor
Defining the persona
Defining the audio environment
Day 2

Creating the call flows

Writing sample dialogs
Analyzing usability test results
Creating the detailed Design Specification

Day 3

Advanced Dialog Design Techniques

Defining the system behavior
Writing the system messages
Defining the grammar needs

Day 4

Obtaining caller feedback

Testing the initial design
Validating the coded design
Obtaining feedback at initial deployment
Monitoring caller feedback post deployment
Creating a plan for success
Course wrap-up