Wish List

OK, it's all pretty flashy, this voice stuff. But where should it be going? What are some things that need attention now? Below is a list, on a product by product basis, of things vendors could do to make their products even hotter. Place your wishes here and we'll see that the perfect vendor gets to hear about it. You can have a voice in how the future unfolds.

For all dictation products:

• Incremental training - The training period is a bore. Products should learn at every session whatever they can. A person should not have to explicitly train before the program's learning occurs.
• Easier setup for voice macros - program should be able to watch key stroke patterns and suggest a nearly completed macro for commonly occurring key sequences.
• Faster loading times for speech programs - Because of the memory requirements conflicts, you sometimes want the speech running and sometimes not during the same computer session. Having to repeatedly wait 2+ minutes to start up under these circumstances is a turnoff and discourages product use altogether. Perhaps there should be some kind of "warm start." IBM ViaVoice is currently the least offensive in this regard.
• A way to "train out" commonly occurring office noises - If a certain noise is always erroneously translated into some kind of text, there should be an easy way to tell the program to ignore it.

for Dragon Naturally Mobile:

• From Tester: Dual training for hand held unit and headset is inexcusable. It should be possible to train both together by wearing the headset while talking into the palm recorder. It should also be possible to edit the transcriptions using the headset rather than mouse.

for IBM ViaVoice

• From Tester: Shouldn't have to paste text into speech reader, then click "read." Should be a single keystroke or "drag and speak" operation.

This list is compiled from our testers, client feedback and your input. It is avidly read by people at Dragon, IBM, and so on. If you'd like to see something in a voice product that isn't out there now, send a description to us and we'll make sure that the right vendor contact gets to know your needs.

 
 
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