ESCA - NATO/RSG 10 Workshop on Applications of Speech Technology Lautrach, Germany September 16-17, 1993

Conversations With a Spoken Dialogue System: Findings from Wizard of Oz Simulations

C. MacDermid

Social and Computer Sciences Research Group, Dept. of Sociology, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK

During the development of speech-based database enquiry systems for dialogue over the telephone with members of the general public, Wizard of Oz simulations (in which an accomplice plays the role of the system) were conducted. The simulations provided evidence of naive callers adapting their speech to the system's presumed capabilities. They have also shown that callers tolerate speech recognition errors where there is graceful error recovery However, the data have raised questions about the need for constraints to be imposed on callers' initial utterances if dialogues are to be successful.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  MacDermid, C. (1993): "Conversations with a spoken dialogue system: findings from wizard of oz simulations", In AST-1993, 153-156.