“Why Tap When You Can Talk?”: Designing Multimodal Interfaces for Mobile Devices that Are Effective, Adaptive and Satisfying to the User

Abstract

It is becoming clear that as mobile devices become more capable, the user interface is the last remaining barrier to the scope of applications and services that can be made available to the users of these devices. It is equally clear that speech has an important role to play in removing these user interface barriers. Vlingo, based in Boston, is a four-year-old company that creates multi-modal interfaces for mobile phones, by making use of advanced speech technologies. Our chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges that are presented in the mobile environment, describing the approaches taken by Vlingo to solve such challenges. We present findings from over 600 usability tests in addition to results from large-scale commercial deployments.