Programming Voice Interfaces

Programming Voice Interfaces

Author: Walter Quesada

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2017-11-20

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1492031402

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Get a step-by-step guide for developing voice interfaces for applications and devices connected to the Internet of Things. By allowing consumers to use natural human interactions, you can avoid awkward methods of input and interactivity to provide them with elevated user experiences. This practical book is ideal for software engineers who build applications for the Web, smartphones, as well as embedded systems that dominate the IoT space. Integrate voice interfaces with internet connected devices and sensors Learn how to integrate with existing voice interfaces Understand when to use a voice over other Natural User Interface technologies Build a prototype with tools such as Raspberry Pi, solderless breadboards, jumper cables, sensors, Arduino, Visual Studio, and other tools Use cloud services such as Azure and AWS to integrate voice with your existing or new web service end-points


Designing Voice User Interfaces

Designing Voice User Interfaces

Author: Cathy Pearl

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2016-12-19

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1491955384

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Voice user interfaces (VUIs) are becoming all the rage today. But how do you build one that people can actually converse with? Whether you’re designing a mobile app, a toy, or a device such as a home assistant, this practical book guides you through basic VUI design principles, helps you choose the right speech recognition engine, and shows you how to measure your VUI’s performance and improve upon it. Author Cathy Pearl also takes product managers, UX designers, and VUI designers into advanced design topics that will help make your VUI not just functional, but great.Understand key VUI design concepts, including command-and-control and conversational systemsDecide if you should use an avatar or other visual representation with your VUIExplore speech recognition technology and its impact on your designTake your VUI above and beyond the basic exchange of informationLearn practical ways to test your VUI application with usersMonitor your app and learn how to quickly improve performanceGet real-world examples of VUIs for home assistants, smartwatches, and car systems


Practical Speech User Interface Design

Practical Speech User Interface Design

Author: James R. Lewis

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2016-04-19

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1439815852

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Although speech is the most natural form of communication between humans, most people find using speech to communicate with machines anything but natural. Drawing from psychology, human-computer interaction, linguistics, and communication theory, Practical Speech User Interface Design provides a comprehensive yet concise survey of practical speech


Mastering Voice Interfaces

Mastering Voice Interfaces

Author: Ann Thymé-Gobbel

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 9781484270066

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We live in a golden age of voice technology. Advances in automatic speech recognition (ASR), natural language processing (NLP) and other technologies have made it extremely viable for people to be talking to machines and getting reasonable answers. Platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, and the associated tools, have made it so anyone can build a voice app, and this is excellent. What we have seen though is that it's fairly easy to build a voice app, but still remarkably difficult to build a great app, one that gets the user what they need, and hopefully the user comes back for more. In Mastering Voice Interfaces we want to show you how to build great voice apps. We start with the basics of voice interfaces, and how they are different from others, then dive into basic design principles that we're learned in many years building these apps in the industry. As we cover a design principle, we'll also demonstrate how to implement it with one of the established voice platforms (Google Home), and show how, though the tools are great, you don't have to go too far to have to do some custom work to get what you really want. Well l walk through many design and development techniques that some would view as advanced, but that can make a huge difference in the quality of the app. Readers of Mastering Voice Interfaces will come away with a very good understanding of what makes voice interfaces so special, learn the basic design principles are for building great voice apps, and how to actually implement those principles and create working apps. What you will learn: What makes voice special and different from other input and output modalities, and why that matters. What the best practices for the various components of the voice-first creation process What are the consequences of design and implementation choices How to create truly great voice apps that users will love Who this book is for We expect readers to have had some exposure to voice apps, at least as users. The book is written for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the how and why of voice interface design and development. For team of developers, designers, product owners who need a shared understanding of voice interfaces.


Programming Voice Interfaces

Programming Voice Interfaces

Author: Walter Quesada

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2017-11-20

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1492031380

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Get a step-by-step guide for developing voice interfaces for applications and devices connected to the Internet of Things. By allowing consumers to use natural human interactions, you can avoid awkward methods of input and interactivity to provide them with elevated user experiences. This practical book is ideal for software engineers who build applications for the Web, smartphones, as well as embedded systems that dominate the IoT space. Integrate voice interfaces with internet connected devices and sensors Learn how to integrate with existing voice interfaces Understand when to use a voice over other Natural User Interface technologies Build a prototype with tools such as Raspberry Pi, solderless breadboards, jumper cables, sensors, Arduino, Visual Studio, and other tools Use cloud services such as Azure and AWS to integrate voice with your existing or new web service end-points


Voice User Interface Design

Voice User Interface Design

Author: Michael Harris Cohen

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780321185761

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This book is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to voice user interface (VUI) design. The VUI is perhaps the most critical factor in the success of any automated speech recognition (ASR) system, determining whether the user experience will be satisfying or frustrating, or even whether the customer will remain one. This book describes a practical methodology for creating an effective VUI design. The methodology is scientifically based on principles in linguistics, psychology, and language technology, and is illustrated here by examples drawn from the authors' work at Nuance Communications, the market leader in ASR development and deployment. The book begins with an overview of VUI design issues and a description of the technology. The authors then introduce the major phases of their methodology. They first show how to specify requirements and make high-level design decisions during the definition phase. They next cover, in great detail, the design phase, with clear explanations and demonstrations of each design principle and its real-world applications. Finally, they examine problems unique to VUI design in system development, testing, and tuning. Key principles are illustrated with a running sample application. A companion Web site provides audio clips for each example: www.VUIDesign.org The cover photograph depicts the first ASR system, Radio Rex: a toy dog who sits in his house until the sound of his name calls him out. Produced in 1911, Rex was among the few commercial successes in earlier days of speech recognition. Voice User Interface Design reveals the design principles and practices that produce commercial success in an era when effective ASRs are not toys but competitive necessities.


Make Python Talk

Make Python Talk

Author: Mark Liu

Publisher: No Starch Press

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 1718501579

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A project-based book that teaches beginning Python programmers how to build working, useful, and fun voice-controlled applications. This fun, hands-on book will take your basic Python skills to the next level as you build voice-controlled apps to use in your daily life. Starting with a Python refresher and an introduction to speech-recognition/text-to-speech functionalities, you’ll soon ease into more advanced topics, like making your own modules and building working voice-controlled apps. Each chapter scaffolds multiple projects that allow you to see real results from your code at a manageable pace, while end-of-chapter exercises strengthen your understanding of new concepts. You’ll design interactive games, like Connect Four and Tic-Tac-Toe, and create intelligent computer opponents that talk and take commands; you’ll make a real-time language translator, and create voice-activated financial-market apps that track the stocks or cryptocurrencies you are interested in. Finally, you’ll load all of these features into the ultimate virtual personal assistant – a conversational VPA that tells jokes, reads the news, and gives you hands-free control of your email, browser, music player, desktop files, and more. Along the way, you’ll learn how to: ● Build Python modules, implement animations, and integrate live data into an app ● Use web-scraping skills for voice-controlling podcasts, videos, and web searches ● Fine-tune the speech recognition to accept a variety of input ● Associate regular tasks like opening files and accessing the web with speech commands ● Integrate functionality from other programs into a single VPA with computational knowledge engines to answer almost any question Packed with cross-platform code examples to download, practice activities and exercises, and explainer images, you’ll quickly become proficient in Python coding in general and speech recognition/text to speech in particular.


Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development

Hands-On Chatbots and Conversational UI Development

Author: Srini Janarthanam

Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd

Published: 2017-12-29

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1788298330

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Build over 8 chatbots and conversational user interfaces with leading tools such as Chatfuel, Dialogflow, Microsoft Bot Framework, Twilio, Alexa Skills, and Google Actions and deploying them on channels like Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa and Google Home About This Book Understand the different use cases of Conversational UIs with this project-based guide Build feature-rich Chatbots and deploy them on multiple platforms Get real-world examples of voice-enabled UIs for personal and home assistance Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who are interested in creating interactive conversational UIs/Chatbots. A basic understanding of JavaScript and web APIs is required. What You Will Learn Design the flow of conversation between the user and the chatbot Create Task model chatbots for implementing tasks such as ordering food Get new toolkits and services in the chatbot ecosystem Integrate third-party information APIs to build interesting chatbots Find out how to deploy chatbots on messaging platforms Build a chatbot using MS Bot Framework See how to tweet, listen to tweets, and respond using a chatbot on Twitter Publish chatbots on Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa In Detail Conversation as an interface is the best way for machines to interact with us using the universally accepted human tool that is language. Chatbots and voice user interfaces are two flavors of conversational UIs. Chatbots are real-time, data-driven answer engines that talk in natural language and are context-aware. Voice user interfaces are driven by voice and can understand and respond to users using speech. This book covers both types of conversational UIs by leveraging APIs from multiple platforms. We'll take a project-based approach to understand how these UIs are built and the best use cases for deploying them. We'll start by building a simple messaging bot from the Facebook Messenger API to understand the basics of bot building. Then we move on to creating a Task model that can perform complex tasks such as ordering and planning events with the newly-acquired-by-Google Dialogflow and Microsoft Bot framework. We then turn to voice-enabled UIs that are capable of interacting with users using speech with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. By the end of the book, you will have created your own line of chatbots and voice UIs for multiple leading platforms. Style and approach This is a practical book, where each chapter focuses on a chatbot project. The chapters take a step-by-step approach to help you build intelligent chatbots that act as personal assistants.


User Interface Design for Programmers

User Interface Design for Programmers

Author: Avram Joel Spolsky

Publisher: Apress

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1430208570

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Most programmers' fear of user interface (UI) programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphic design—the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-black-wearing people produce cool-looking, artistic pieces. Most programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers instead—strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment, and incapable of doing UI design. In this brilliantly readable book, author Joel Spolsky proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. Spolsky's primary axiom, the importance of bringing the program model in line with the user model, is both rational and simple. In a fun and entertaining way, Spolky makes user interface design easy for programmers to grasp. After reading User Interface Design for Programmers, you'll know how to design interfaces with the user in mind. You'll learn the important principles that underlie all good UI design, and you'll learn how to perform usability testing that works.


Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant

Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant

Author: Dustin Coates

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1638350000

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Summary Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant is your guide to designing, building, and implementing voice-based applications for Alexa and Google Assistant. Inside, you'll learn how to build your own "skills"—the voice app term for actions the device can perform—from scratch. Foreword by Max Amordeluso. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. You'll find registration instructions inside the print book. About the Technology In 2018, an estimated 100 million voice-controlled devices were installed in homes worldwide, and the apps that control them, like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, are getting more powerful, with new skills being added every day. Great voice apps improve how users interact with the web, whether they're checking the weather, asking for sports scores, or playing a game. About the Book Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant is your guide to designing, building, and implementing voice-based applications for Alexa and Google Assistant. You'll learn to build applications that listen to users, store information, and rely on user context, as you create a voice-powered sleep tracker from scratch. With the basics mastered, you'll dig deeper into multiuse conversational flow and other more-advanced concepts. Smaller projects along the way reinforce your new techniques and best practices. What's inside Building a call-and-response skill Designing a voice user interface Using conversational context Going multimodal Tips and best practices About the Reader Perfect for developers with intermediate JavaScript skills and basic Node.js skills. No previous experience with voice-first platforms is required. About the Author Dustin A. Coates is a developer who focuses on voice and conversational applications. He's currently the voice search lead at Algolia and is also a Google Developers Expert for Assistant as well as cohost of the VUX World podcast. Table of Contents Introduction to voice first Building a call-and-response skill on Alexa Designing a voice user interface Using entity resolution and built?in intents in Alexa skills Making a conversational Alexa skill VUI and conversation best practices Using conversation tools to add meaning and usability Directing conversation flow Building for Google Assistant Going multimodal Push interactions Building for actions on Google with the Actions SDK