The limits of speech recognition

To improve speech recognition applications, designers must understand acoustic memory and prosody. Human-human relationships are rarely a good model for designing effective user interfaces. Spoken language is effective for human-human interaction but often has severe limitations when applied to human-computer interaction. Speech is slow for presenting information, is transient and therefore difficult to review or edit, and interferes significantly with other cognitive tasks. However, speech has proved useful for store-and-forward messages, alerts in busy environments, and input-output for blind or motor-impaired users.