Chapter Three. The Psychology of How People Interact with Speech-Recognition Systems

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it ” yesterday it was color , today three dimensions. I don't give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation.

” ORSON WELLES

Imagine two speech-recognition systems created for identical applications. Both have been carefully designed. Both have been rigorously tested for quality and usability. Both have been fine- tuned over the course of progressively broader deployment. But ”for some reason ”one system is more successful than the other. More callers use it ”and they use it more frequently. What could possibly be the difference? To understand why some systems work better than others, it's essential to understand the psychology of how people interact with systems that talk ”and the tremendous power of the voice.

Electronic devices that transmit or reproduce the human voice have been with us for over 125 years. The far-reaching impact of the first telephone was certainly not lost on Alexander Graham Bell, who had the first long-distance telephone system wired and operational within two years after he invented it in 1876. We who live in a world burgeoning with talking machines can barely imagine the visceral, emotional impact the early telephones and phonographs must have had on the general public. Within a few years, a world full of people who had never experienced anything other than face-to-face communications could hear the voice of a distant , beloved relative ”or even the great Caruso himself! ”in their own parlors. Nobody complained that the voices they heard on the phone were tinny approximations of the real thing or that Caruso's magnificent tenor sounded thinner and more brittle than a real live performance. Why not? Because the thing that mattered most ”the emotional impact ”came through loud and clear.

That also explains why, despite predictions by many to the contrary, television never made radio obsolete. By 1948 there were about one million televisions in homes throughout the United States, but millions of people were still listening to programs like The Shadow on the radio. Even today, despite the proliferation of cable TV channels and a vast wealth of video content, radio remains a vibrant and vital medium.

Of course, there's plenty of less-than -compelling audio and video programming out there. Talented directors, writers, and ”yes, speech-recognition designers ”can cause their audiences to feel a particular emotion, while others are less successful. What's the difference? Good directors, writers, and designers understand social psychology, even if it's something they have never formally studied.

One thing speech-recognition systems have in common with television, radio, and film is that they are mass media; they're designed for no one person in particular. The Shadow was created for an audience of millions ”most of whom the writers and producers had never met. Think about your favorite movie. Had the director and actors of that film ever met you? Probably not, yet their work spoke to you. In an understandably less profound but no less engaging way, a good speech-recognition system makes an emotional connection with its callers.

This is all not just my opinion. It has been borne out in research studies that have explored the psychology of how people interact with media.