Separating VUI from business logic Caller Experience-centered design approach Alex Kurganov, CTO Parus Interactive

100 shoes to tie? Oh boy… Being in Speech ASP shoes

Speech Application Life Cycle Challenges Multi-tenant, frequently changing, custom application environments are not well supported VUI Designer intent often misinterpreted by programmers, QA Customers don’t hear Caller Experience early on, only see dense Visio pages Manual testing of complex VUI is a challenge Changes in VUI design not tied to code, poorly tracked

VUI is buried inside, intermixed with business logic, human authored software code VUI tools are programmer-oriented, not VUI designer oriented Conversely, business logic development tools are non–programmer oriented, enforce inefficient graphical programming VUI design is visualized with either too much, or too little detail Issues with Traditional Speech Design and Tools

Caller Experience is the most important part for the customer Achieving consistently positive Caller Experience is the most challenging part Caller Experience deserves to be abstracted from everything else in a clean way We need to separate it from other components to focus on it, design it well, review and hear it, then enforce it into code Caller Experience-centered Design Approach

VUI Markup (WSDML) describing call flow, dialogs, grammars, audio prompts, parameters, run-time variables while excluding programmatic elements Run-time Interpreter implementing a Universal Speech Dialog state Machine (USDM) Object hierarchies offering a high level API for bus. logic development; speech/telephony platform plugins Graphical VUI Design Studio and Prompt Tool Testing, Tuning, Visualization and Simulation Tools Speech Development Framework Components

System Architecture

Automates typical speech and DTMF dialog scenarios and behaviors, such as error loops, confirmations, dynamic prompt concatenation Enables call flow transitions Ensures a consistent Caller Experience as human programming of the dialog logic is eliminated Parameters, prompts, grammars can be inherited from templates, grammars auto-merge at run-time Packaged, automated common dialog behaviors greatly simplify custom speech app development Universal Speech Dialog State Machine (USDM)

Implements the separation of the VUI from the business logic Solves the “designer intent misinterpretation” problem, ensures designer control of VUI Separate debugging and revision of VUI logic and business logic Automated testing of the VUI separate from the business logic Speech UI Markup (WSDML)

Multi-lingual audio prompt lists help retain the same VUI across languages whenever possible Events, DTMF maps and formats, namespaces, reusable modules, embedding of standard markups such as GRXML, SSML Makes the entire VUI transparent for a non- programmer Any dialog within a module can be an entry point, can be attached to a dialed number or called from other modules Speech UI Markup (Cont.)

Written in a scripting language, no memory management headaches Architecturally simple which makes it extremely stable Speech and telephony platform independent Business logic integration is extremely simple. Same with the platform interface Logs everything it is doing in a consistent manner, so it is easy to collect stats Contains nothing object framework, platform, or programming language specific Speech UI Markup Interpreter

Maintain familiar to VUI Designer flowchart-like look and feel (no objects) Allow for different VUI views with more or less detail Implement as an Eclipse plug-in or via AJAX at the browser level Contextual search Generate dialog stubs for business logic developers in their chosen environment Allow run-time simulation using the same interpreter Speech UI Designer Tool

Other Tools Full coverage tests in the form of simple text files with a sequence of commands Run the entire test suite in a matter of seconds generating both audio and html session transcripts QA can re-run full coverage regression tests in minutes and immediately see the differences with the previous run Set of log analysis tools that work with any speech app regardless of the type of platform Session viewer, auto generation of stats graphs

Speech and Telephony Platform Plugins An architecturally simple component VXML/CCXML plugin to integrate with any standard VXML/CCXML platform; generates dynamic VXML A plugin for Asterisk based media and speech platform A debugging and simulation plugin for standard input/output

Optimal labor separation between VUI designers and software developers Large, custom speech applications can be built, supported and evolved inexpensively Transparency of the Caller Experience for the customer Better visualization, higher quality, higher productivity and consistency of VUI design Implications for Speech Life Cycle

Shortened business logic development cycles, much less software to write VUI changes often don’t require software changes, resulting in fewer defects, shorter QA cycle Efficient automated testing of VUI Automated log analysis, caller behavior visualization, application self-adaptation Run-time is VUI design aware, caller usage paths and problem areas are clearly visualized Implications for Speech Life Cycle (Cont.)

Q & A Alex Kurganov, CTO Parus Interactive