@article{1fb63ea73fa0409e9164eaaf03530508,
title = "17 ways to say yes: Toward nuanced tone of voice in AAC and speech technology",
abstract = "People with complex communication needs who use speech-generating devices have very little expressive control over their tone of voice. Despite its importance in human interaction, the issue of tone of voice remains all but absent from AAC research and development however. In this paper, we describe three interdisciplinary projects, past, present and future: The critical design collection Six Speaking Chairs has provoked deeper discussion and inspired a social model of tone of voice; the speculative concept Speech Hedge illustrates challenges and opportunities in designing more expressive user interfaces; the pilot project Tonetable could enable participatory research and seed a research network around tone of voice. We speculate that more radical interactions might expand frontiers of AAC and disrupt speech technology as a whole.",
keywords = "expressiveness, intonation, speech generating devices, interaction design, participatory design",
author = "Graham Pullin and Shannon Hennig",
note = "Its originality comes from illuminating an issue overlooked in the whole interdisciplinary field of augmentative and alternative communication, and doing this by applying design thinking and design practice; its rigour comes from my PhD {\textquoteleft}17 ways to say yes, exploring tone of voice in augmentative communication and designing new interactions with speech synthesis{\textquoteright}—and also a conception of rigour (Fallman & Stolterman, 2010) defined in terms of the effectiveness of the research in starting new conversations. Rigorous peer review process: first submission 23 April 2014; reviewed September 2014; resubmission with response October 2014; reviewed January 2015; revisions February 2015; final revisions 24 March 2015; Fallman, D. & Stolterman, E. (2010). Establishing criteria and relevance in interaction design research, Digital Creativity, 21, 265–272 its significance is indicated by it forming the keynote address at AAC-RERC State of the Science Conference (the pre-eminent U.S. AAC research conference, held once every 5 years) in Baltimore, June 2012 and its publication as a 'Forum Note': editors of AAC, Janice Light and David McNaughton wrote: {"}... We would be very interested in your submitting a forum paper to the journal AAC. As you know, these forum papers are often some of the most frequently cited papers and they often serve to propel the field into new and interesting directions. We believe that your proposed paper has significant potential to make a positive impact on the field and we would be very interested in such a submission...{"} Catalysing further research in this area could have significance beyond AAC: it could influence speech technology in general. ",
year = "2015",
doi = "10.3109/07434618.2015.1037930",
language = "English",
volume = "31",
pages = "170--180",
journal = "Augmentative and Alternative Communication",
issn = "0743-4618",
publisher = "Taylor & Francis",
number = "2",
}
