Speech Recognition as an Aid to Productivity in Word Processing

Abstract

The use of speech recognition in the area of office automation has received little experimental evaluation. Most speech recognition studies have involved testing in military command and control or aircraft environments. Speech control of spreadsheet and word processing programs is discussed by various manufacturers and in the popular press, yet no empirical data have been presented to substantiate its use in these applications. In one of the few studies applicable to the office environment (Murray, Van Praag, and Gilfoil, 1983), the use of speech to control cursor motion was found to be less efficient than the use of traditional cursor keys. To justify the expense of adding equipment to an office workstation, a significant increase in worker productivity needs to be demonstrated. The dedicated word processing operator, involved in the task of transcribing large quantities of textual data from hardcopy or dictation tapes, was chosen for examination in this study. The majority of word processing operator keystroke activity is within the QWERTY portion of the text entry keyboard. However, many of the necessary control operations used during text entry are located on dedicated or soft function keys. These function keys are often located well away from the QWERTY portion of the keyboard, interrupting the touch typist's activity in order to locate and activate the appropriate key. In this study, the use of speech input to select operations normally assigned to function keys was evaluated. It was hypothesized that the operator would experience less distraction in the primary task of text entry when operations were selected verbally rather than by manual activation of the function keys. This would be reflected in reduced text entry time and possible reduction in keystroke errors when selecting operations. In contrast to the earlier study examining speech control of a cursor positioning task in which speech was found to be inferior to manual control, this study used speech to control discrete operations. Subjects were experienced word processing operators. The primary task was transcription of text documents requiring frequent format changes. The subjects were placed in two groups. Group I was trained to operate a word processing package in which control operations were selected by using hard and soft function keys located above and to the right of the QWERTY keypad. Group II was trained to use the identical word processing software, with the difference being that control operations were selected by using speech input. Data collected and analyzed included time to complete the text entry task, number of entry errors, number of command errors, and subjective ratings of operator satisfaction with the system used.