Colla Voce Consulting::::vui portfolio

VUI portfolio

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ABOUT OUR
SERVICES
vui design
voice-content creation
voice talent
  (voiceover,
     voice acting)
usability
music composition/arranging

ABOUT VOICE
INTERFACES
how are vuis different?
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  development cycle
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This page features portfolio examples of various voice application design work. While this doesn't necessarily represent every project in the VUI arena (some work remains proprietary to the company for which it was performed and cannot be reproduced here), it should provide a good capsule view of relevant voice-application design experience and background.

Recent deployments

US Airways E-upgrades
(upgrades to seat assignments)
Northwest Airlines WorldPerks Reservations
Medicare
1-800-MEDICARE
T-Mobile
(Available only to T-Mobile customers calling regarding bill-payment options)
Metro One Email Reader
PayPal
K-mart
Nicor (Northern Illinois) Gas Company
Blue Cross / Blue Shield
(Benefits confirmation and explanation for policyholders)
Rite-Aid Pharmacies Rx Reminder
(Outbound dialer to Rite-Aid customers)
Phil Harvey Enterprises
(Order status customer self-service)

Voice talent demo application

The applications below are a composite of various application and prompt samples Matt Prather has recorded as a professional voice talent. The first file is geared toward financial institutions and applications, while the second is oriented toward airline/travel applications.

NOTE: These are large streaming files, and are not recommended for slower (dial-up) connections.

The following demo file represents an application for which Matt served as both VUI designer and voice talent. The attempt is to provide a conversational and personalized approach to a registered customer, while still gently guiding the caller toward an upsell in an area that may be new to the caller (a "shared reservation" for travel) — the caller benefits from a discounted price, while the customer benefits from an additional sale.

NOTE: In the following two examples, the company name has been replaced by a chime tone to protect company confidentiality. Caller names have also been altered.

The example below was prepared for the same travel service as the preceding example, but in this example the caller is not recognized by the number from which she is calling, so the application must ask for a login. Note that the application parses and filters the caller's "extra" words and phrases to act on those that are meaningful within the context of the application.

Interactive On-Hold Application

This design prototype was created to demonstrate to IBM a variety of potential uses and situations that might occur while having callers wait on hold for a service representative at an unnamed "banking center". Specifically, this brief demo shows the following abilities and features occurring during the time the caller spends on hold:

The system answers and responds with a friendly greeting "with personality". (This required careful writing of the prompts, together with expert coaching of the voice talent to achieve just the "warm but professional" tone appropriate for this application.)
The system immediately informs the user of the expected wait time.
After a brief pause, the system prompts the user with available voice commands. This brief demo also shows the barge-in ability, in which the user can interrupt the system prompts to issue voice commands.
When the caller coughs, the system responds to this out-of-grammar or unrecognized utterance with a friendly prompt. (This again involved extensive design effort and collaboration, to determine how best to respond to unrecognized commands, as well as iterative tuning of the application grammars.)
The caller issues a command that was not explicitly listed, when he asks the system to "look up headline news". The natural-language recognition system processes this request and responds with, "Okay." Likewise, the system recognizes and responds to such conversational elements as "Thank you", responding with a cheerful, "You're welcome."
The system periodically updates the remaining wait time for the caller, and thanks him for his patience.

Portico Virtual Assistant "Sample Call" Script

(Acrobat file appears in separate browser window)

This is the original script for a demo of the Portico Virtual Assistant application of General Magic. The demo was intended for use with potential telephone company (telco) clients such as BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, Qwest, and AT&T, who were all considering implementing branded versions of the Portico service. I have taken the original script that I wrote for this demo and added some explanatory commentary in the sidebar column, to point out particular features of the script that were intended to show off Portico to its best advantage or to point up distinctive functionality of the service and the interface.

Of particular note in this script are the instances of mixed-initiative and natural-language conversations—in a couple of cases, the user actually makes some fairly complex requests of the system, all in a single utterance. This not only represented a quantum leap over many competitive systems of the time, but would serve as a model for future systems as well.

OnStar Virtual Advisor

The OnStar Virtual Advisor was a direct outgrowth of the Portico project at General Magic, and as such used many of the same designs, state tables, and specifications created and updated for the Portico (and later myTalk) services. General Motors, parent company to OnStar, retains rights to this intellectual property, but a full explanation and demo of the OnStar Virtual Assistant is available at
http://www.onstar.com.