Sunday, April 22, 2007

Mobile user experience by Google

Stephen Wellman from Information Week summarized talk by Google user experience designer Leland Rechis recently. You can find the write up at the InformationWeek's Mobile Weblog.

Here is the excerpt:

"Wellman breaks down mobile users into three behavior groups:
A. Repetitive now
B. Bored now
C. Urgent now

The repetitive now user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The bored now are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The urgent now is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries."

The model looks good. The only change I would make is renaming "bored now" with "available now". "Bored now" suggests need to be entertained. "Available now" is much broader. It encompasses entertainment but also covers “I have a spare moment, I better use it productively” mindset.

The three behavioral models suggest three different categories of applications supporting specific user needs.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Mobile Voice Recognition

Mobile devices have some annoying limitations. In particular, data input using tiny keyboards is cumbersome. Output capabilities and screen size are less of a problem. If you could only talk to the device and get results displayed on the screen you could make phones much more user friendly.

The topic of my master thesis was speech recognition using neural networks. It was a while ago - I will not mention the exact number of years :-). Technology has made a lot of improvements since then. Many companies have deployed speech recognition in call centers to replace traditional IVR systems and improve customer experience. Desktop products such as Dragon Naturally Speaking have been available for a number of years. Underlying standards such as VoiceXML have matured.

Speech recognition is also making progress in the mobile space. Nuance, the leading provider of speech solutions, is promoting its Mobile Speech Platform. Applications include mobile search and mobile messaging. Search responds to voice commands such as

“Find restaurant near Union Square, San Francisco”
“Weather in the Bay Area”
“Call Bob Tekiela”

Messaging combines dictation software with Text To Speech (TTS) engine enabling users to speak and/or listen to emails, IM or text messages.

Other companies working on mobile speech recognition include:
Promptu
V-Enable
VoiceBox Technologies
VoiceSignal