Two Top Industry Leaders Speak Out Judith Markowitz When Amy asked me to co-author the foreword to her new book on advances in speech recognition, I was honored. Amy’s work has always been infused with c- ative intensity, so I knew the book would be as interesting for established speech professionals as for readers new to the speech-processing industry. The fact that I would be writing the foreward with Bill Scholz made the job even more enjoyable. Bill and I have known each other since he was at UNISYS directing projects that had a profound impact on speech-recognition tools and applications. Bill Scholz The opportunity to prepare this foreword with Judith provides me with a rare oppor- nity to collaborate with a seasoned speech professional to identify numerous signi- cant contributions to the field offered by the contributors whom Amy has recruited. Judith and I have had our eyes opened by the ideas and analyses offered by this collection of authors. Speech recognition no longer needs be relegated to the ca- gory of an experimental future technology; it is here today with sufficient capability to address the most challenging of tasks. And the point-click-type approach to GUI control is no longer sufficient, especially in the context of limitations of mode- day hand held devices. Instead, VUI and GUI are being integrated into unified multimodal solutions that are maturing into the fundamental paradigm for comput- human interaction in the future.

Mobile Environments.- “Life on-the-Go”: The Role of Speech Technology in Mobile Applications.- “Striking a Healthy Balance”: Speech Technology in the Mobile Ecosystem.- “Why Tap When You Can Talk?”: Designing Multimodal Interfaces for Mobile Devices that Are Effective, Adaptive and Satisfying to the User.- “Your Word is my Command”: Google Search by Voice: A Case Study.- “Well Adjusted”: Using Robust and Flexible Speech Recognition Capabilities in Clean to Noisy Mobile Environments.- Call Centers.- “It’s the Best of All Possible Worlds”: Leveraging Multimodality to Improve Call Center Productivity.- “How am I Doing?”: A New Framework to Effectively Measure the Performance of Automated Customer Care Contact Centers.- “Great Expectations”: Making use of Callers’ Experiences from Everyday Life to Design a Satisfying Speech-only Interface for the Call Center.- “For Heaven’s Sake, Gimme a Live Person!” Designing Emotion-Detection Customer Care Voice Applications in Automated Call Centers.- “The Truth is Out There”: Using Advanced Speech Analytics to Learn Why Customers Call Help-line Desks and How Effectively They Are Being Served by the Call Center Agent.- Clinics.- Dr. “Multi-Task”: Using Speech to Build Up Electronic Medical Records While Caring for Patients.- “Hands Free”: Adapting the Task–Technology-Fit Model and Smart Data to Validate End-User Acceptance of the Voice Activated Medical Tracking Application (VAMTA) in the United States Military.- “You’re as Sick as You Sound”: Using Computational Approaches for Modeling Speaker State to Gauge Illness and Recovery.- “Cry Baby”: Using Spectrographic Analysis to Assess Neonatal Health Status from an Infant’s Cry.

Two Top Industry Leaders Speak Out Judith Markowitz When Amy asked me to co-author the foreword to her new book on advances in speech recognition, I was honored. Amy’s work has always been infused with c- ative intensity, so I knew the book would be as interesting for established speech professionals as for readers new to the speech-processing industry. The fact that I would be writing the foreward with Bill Scholz made the job even more enjoyable. Bill and I have known each other since he was at UNISYS directing projects that had a profound impact on speech-recognition tools and applications. Bill Scholz The opportunity to prepare this foreword with Judith provides me with a rare oppor- nity to collaborate with a seasoned speech professional to identify numerous signi- cant contributions to the field offered by the contributors whom Amy has recruited. Judith and I have had our eyes opened by the ideas and analyses offered by this collection of authors. Speech recognition no longer needs be relegated to the ca- gory of an experimental future technology; it is here today with sufficient capability to address the most challenging of tasks. And the point-click-type approach to GUI control is no longer sufficient, especially in the context of limitations of mode- day hand held devices. Instead, VUI and GUI are being integrated into unified multimodal solutions that are maturing into the fundamental paradigm for comput- human interaction in the future.