Generating speech-enabled user interfaces
View Patent ↗Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for automatically creating a speech-based user interface involve identifying a software service definition that includes service inputs, service outputs, and context data and accessing a standard user interface incorporating the service input and output. The standard user interface defines a set of valid inputs for the service input and a set of available outputs, at least one of which based on the context data. Audio data is associated with at least some of the inputs in the set of valid inputs to define a set of valid speech inputs. A speech-based user interface is automatically generated from the standard user interface and the set of valid speech inputs.
1. A method comprising:
identifying a software service definition comprising at least one service input, at least one service output and context data related to at least one of the service input or the service output, wherein no audio data are associated with the software service definition;
accessing a standard user interface that incorporates the service input and the service output, the standard user interface defining a set of valid inputs for the service input and a set of available outputs, wherein at least one of the set of valid inputs or the set of available outputs is based on the related context data, wherein no audio data are initially associated with the software standard user interface;
associating audio data with at least some of the inputs in the set of valid inputs for use with a speech recognition system to define a set of valid speech inputs; and
automatically creating a speech-based user interface from the standard user interface incorporating the set of valid speech inputs.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising associating audio data with at least some of the outputs in the set of available outputs for use with a speech generation system to define a set of available speech outputs, the automatically created speech-based user interface further incorporating the set of available speech outputs.
3. The method of claim 2 wherein the audio data comprises at least two language sets.
4. The method of claim 2 further comprising validating at least one speech output in the set of available speech outputs based on at least one speech input in the set of available speech inputs.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein the speech-based user interface graphically presents an output from the set of available outputs.
6. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving speech-interface template data defining at least one rule used in the speech-based user interface to present a speech prompt or accept a speech input.
7. The method of claim 1 further comprising automatically creating a graphic user interface from the standard user interface.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein the standard user interface further defines conditions for presentation of individual available outputs from the set of available outputs.
9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising associating the set of valid speech inputs and the set of available speech outputs with the software service definition to generate a reusable speech interface library for the service definition.
10. A system comprising:
a speech recognition engine;
a specification server storing at least one of a software service definition or a standard user interface generated from the software service definition, wherein the software service definition comprises at least a set of valid inputs, a set of available outputs and context data related to at least one input from the set of valid inputs or one output from the set of available outputs, and wherein no audio data are associated with the software service definition and no audio data are initially associated with the software standard user interface;
an interface generator adapted to automatically generate a speech-enabled user interface from the standard user interface, wherein the speech-enabled user interface is generated by associating audio data with at least some of the inputs in the set of valid inputs and capable of receiving speech-based user inputs through the speech recognition engine.
11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the automatically generated speech-enabled user interface is adapted to graphically present at least one output from the set of available outputs.
12. The system of claim 10 , wherein the interface generator is further capable of automatically generating the speech-enabled user interface by associating audio data with each output in the set of available outputs.
13. The system of claim 12 , further comprising an audio data server capable of storing at least one of the audio data associated with at least some of the inputs in the set of valid inputs or the audio data associated with at least some of the outputs in the set of available outputs for use in connection with the speech-enabled user interface.
14. The system of claim 10 , wherein the audio data server is further capable of storing the set of available outputs, the set of available outputs comprising outputs in more than one language.
15. The system of claim 10 , wherein the automatically generated speech-enabled user interface is adapted to identify a language of a speech-enabled input, interpret the speech-enabled input, and provide at least one output in the identified language of the speech-enabled input.
16. An article comprising a machine-readable medium storing instructions for causing computer processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:
receiving standard user interface data generated from service definition data, wherein no audio data are associated with the software service definition and no audio data are initially associated with the software standard user interface;
parsing the standard user interface data to identify a set of valid inputs comprising at least one valid input, a set of available outputs comprising at least one available output, and context data associated with at least one valid input or available output;
populating a memory device with audio data corresponding to at least one of the valid inputs; and
rendering the standard user interface data by associating the audio data with the standard user interface data to generate a speech-enabled user interface.
17. The article of claim 16 wherein the machine-readable medium further stores instructions for causing computer processing apparatus to perform operations comprising populating the memory device with audio data corresponding to at least one of the available outputs.
18. The article of claim 16 wherein the standard user interface data is received from a remote computer device.
19. The article of claim 16 wherein at least one of the set of valid inputs or set of available outputs is based on the context data.
20. The article of claim 16 wherein the standard user interface data is rendered further by modifying the standard user interface data with speech-specific template data to generate the speech-enabled user interface.