VUI: From Telephone to Smartphone

1. From Telephony VUI to Smartphone VUI
Ahmed Bouzid, Head of Product, Angel
Bruce Balentine, EVP, EIG

2. Telephony VUI
§ IVR is intrusive: Caller called to
speak to a human (Serving not
the caller but the business)
§ Only the Audio Mode: For input
(Speech, DTMF), For output
(Voice and sounds)
§ Clear interaction End Points
§ Interaction is Time Metered
(Utility business model)
§ User must give their Full
Attention to IVR
§ Personalization potential: low
§ Low sound quality: Played to
caller and spoken by caller

3. Smartphone VUI
§ User engages VUI Voluntarily: I want to speak
to my assistant
§ Multi-modality available: user gets to input in
more than one mode
§ Start and End points are Fuzzy
§ Interaction is Task focused: engage to
accomplish a specific task (Task Completion
business model)
§ Multiple Tasks on at the same time
§ User Not Trapped in the interaction: may
Pause and return at their leisure. Pausing is
natural
§ Personalization potential: high
§ User seems to tolerate Delays more on
Smartphone than IVR
§ High Sound Quality: Played to user spoken
by caller

4. Telephony VUI vs Smartphone VUI
Telephony
Smartphone
Engagement
Type
Compulsory
Voluntary
Interac5on
Modes
Exclusively
Audio
Mul5-­‐modal
Interac5on
Unit
Time
Task
Interactoin
End
Points
Clear
Fuzzy
ABen5on
Monopoly
High
Low
Tolera5on
for
Delays
Low
High
Sound
Quality
Low
High

5. VUI Strategies
§ Pausing:
– In telephony need full VUI
– In Smartphone, just stop and then resume
§ Latency
– Telephony: Percolation sounds
– Smartphone: Visuals
§ Error Strategies
– VUI: NI/NM
§ Pause if no inputs in Smartphone
§ Use MM if no match on Smartphone
§ More room to help with handling errors:
§ Display what user can say
§ Offer tutorials to user
– Non-VUI
§ Telephony: Hold the caller until transaction is done.
§ Smartphone: Asynchronous alerting. Don’t need to hold the user. Send alert when
transaction done.

6. VUI Strategy Differences
Behavior
Telephony
VUI
Smartphone
VUI
Pausing
Taxing
on
caller
Leverage
Visual
Latency
Limited
to
Audio
Leverage
Visual
Error
Strategies
Taxing
on
caller
Leverage
visual
Web
Service
Comple5on
Hold
the
caller
un5l
done
Message
the
user
when
done

7. Conversations
§ Interactions
– Linear: Read News, Read
Facebook Wall
– Atomic: one question one
answer (What is the
population of Algeria?)
§ Transactions
– Collect Information (Hotel
reservation information)
– Execute an action (Book
room)

8. Example Smartphone Functions
§ Telephone
– Placing and receiving calls
– Contact data management
§ Electronic Wallet
§ Collaboration
– conference calls
– shared SMS, tweet
– voice notes
§ C2B
Traditional IVR Functions
§ B2C

9. Pause Case
§ Pause Point: where in the
conversation did the pause occur
§ Age of Pause: how long ago?
– If resuming ordering a book from 5
minutes ago, then ask if want to
continue
– If resuming ordering a book from 5
hours ago: then ask if want to
continue + provide summary of
where left off
– If resuming ordering book from 5
days ago: then start from scratch
(maybe selections are obsolete,
etc.).

10. Multi-Tasking Issues
§ Task suspension and resumption
§ Task stacking
§ Abandonment Management
§ Task prioritization
§ Local- versus remote-transaction
contention resolution