Episode Summary
In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the recent BIF10 innovation conference, and some of the notable presentations including: Dan Pink's new TV show Crowd Source, where social science and design for behavior change meet reality TV, and Rupal Patel's project at Northeastern University to bring customized speech to the vocally impaired, The Human Voicebank.
If you're interested in conversation at the intersection of technology, UX, design, and human behavior, you've come to the right place. You can view the full show transcript as well as previous episodes on The Digital Life Web site.
Here are a few quotes from this week's discussion.
Jon on The Human Voicebank:
There were quite a few excellent talks. I’m just going to highlight one other on the show today. At Northeastern University, there’s a project called The Human Voicebank. It’s lead by Dr. Patel who was there at the BIF Conference.
Essentially, we have fantastic technology for transcribing typed words into speech, but evidence from various studies has shown how our identity is some part wrapped in our individuality in the way we express ourselves through our voice.
The raw text-to-voice programs provide this no matter how good they are. It’s a computerized generic rendering. Even if you have 5, 10, 15, 20, it’s not individual. It’s not for you. It doesn’t sound like you would sound if these people have lost their voices from one reason or another. It doesn’t sound like them. It is not them. It’s a hindrance to communication because people don’t feel like they’re speaking with their own voice. They feel like they’re being translated by this computer.
The purpose behind the human voice project is to solicit donations of voices. You or I could go on a site and read a bunch of texts that over the course of five hours, you would give them enough voice samples that could be cut up and reconstructed into other words. The more you donate, the more complete a voice you’ll be giving them. I think five hours is the minimum.
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