Attendees will test-drive the latest tools for developing voice applications, including voice dialogues, grammar managers, prompt managers, voice application testing systems, and libraries of reusable components for voice applications. Determine the amount of ramp-up time necessary to use each development tool as well as how easy each tool is to use. Judge which development tools significantly decrease application development time and how much previous design components can be reused.

Natural language has long been the holy grail of conversational systems. Test-drive new natural language systems that understand what you speak. Determine the strengths and weaknesses of natural language systems versus traditional form-fill systems such as VoiceXML. Get firsthand experience on the issue of domain coverage versus development time. Test-drive machine-to-machine translations systems. Note that this lab does not demonstrate statistical language models such as those used in call routing.

Test-drive a variety of analytic tools. Learn how they can help you better understand what your users are doing and what they need. Evaluate various analytic tools in action, and judge for yourself if their results provide valuable insight. Determine the amount of ramp-up time necessary to use each tool and how easy each tool is to use. See if these tools provide you with the kind of information you need to improve your contact-center services and speech-enabled systems.

See how users can employ speech to interact with new mobile devices — anything from starting applications to setting preferences — as well as enter and retrieve information. Experience how mobile devices power hands-free, eyes-free operation (in your car or on your factory floor); enable people to enter information without the hunt-and-peck of typing on a tiny keypad; and enable people to control their applications with intuitive voice commands instead of drop-down menus and near-invisible icons.

Organizations are relying on innovative solutions to help position themselves for recovery. Speech technology continues to evolve and the applications are reaching new dimensions. Attend this lab session to see some of the latest speech technology innovations and test drive them yourselves. Judge for yourself if these systems contribute to or distract from an organization. And judge for yourself what can be learned from innovative systems that will make other speech technologies easier to use.