‘A mobile phone needs a manual in the way a teacup doesn't’
-Douglas Adams

Back in 1999, I sported a Samsung SCH-3500 mobile phone that had speech recognition capabilities for device-based voice-activated dialing (VAD). Theref was indeed a 'cool factor' to using this feature but for the most part it was highly inaccurate, cumbersome and the application had to be trained through recorded inputs. After only one week of using this feature I stopped…fast forward eight years to SpeechTek West in San Francisco. I am sitting down getting briefed by the CEO of VoiceSignal (www.voicesignal.com), Rich Geruson, when he reached for my new Motorola Crazor mobile phone to provide me with a demo of his company’s technology. To my surprise the VAD feature no longer required any voice training or recording and it was very accurate. Even the user interface design improved vastly as well. By pressing one button on the side of the phone an audible and graphical menu presents itself and guides the user. I was very impressed and ever since have been using this feature heavily for the past week.

A poor experience with VAD changed my perception of this technology for the past eight years – and it took a 2 minute demo to change my mind. I fully expect that this feature will be more prominent in mobile handsets over the next few years, as hands-free legislation is passed in more states and the technology further improves. In order to drive usage of this technology, however, it is important that wireless carriers and vendors emphasize this feature in the book they refer to as instruction manuals. The instruction manuals that come with mobile phones today are just too long and many times the VAD feature is buried somewhere in the instruction manual.

Is this an opportunity for a Video-IVR instructional application regarding mobile phone features? Absolutely!