Chapter 9: Expressive Human & Command Languages
Discussion Topics with Answers
1. Consider voice-activated digital assistants such as Siri, Cortana or Google Talk.
Identify a situation or scenario where you chose to use this personal assistant, and
identify a scenario where you chose to avoid it.
2. As a follow-on to the previous question, produce a thoughtful argument about what
role spoken interaction should have in user interfaces. Be sure to list at least three
benefits and limitations of spoken interaction.
3. Some designers suggest that speech recognition should be used in a telephone
menu system. This would allow users to interact with the system by speaking
instead of pressing buttons on the dial pad. Give two arguments for and two
arguments against the proposal.
4. Define when “speech production” is successful and discuss methods for its
implementation. Cite examples.
Speech production is usually successful when the messages are simple and
short; and users’ visual channels are overloaded.
Examples include:
5. There exist applications of human language understanding technology. Name some
examples.
Examples include:
6. List several situations when command languages can be attractive for users.
Command languages can be attractive when frequent use of a system is
anticipated, users are knowledgeable about the task and interface concepts,