Structure for User-Oriented Dialogues in Computer-Aided Telephony

Abstract Members of The Speech Project, at Oxford Brookes University, have been experimenting with alternative structures for ‘goal-seeking’ dialogues. A dialogue prototyping system has been developed that can instantiate different dialogue structures kept on file. These become active after being installed using dynamic data structures. Input is achieved using speech recognition for a small range of words, and output is in the form of pre-recorded speech messages. The dialogues thus created employ a new approach, and replace the usual menustructure with a simpler question-answer process. The nature of dialogues using computer aided telephony is analysed, and then the work done by members of The Speech Project on an alternative approach using a simpler dialogue structure is described.