Digit and Name Dialing (Voice Signal Technologies)

The Challenge: To develop and deliver an interface for cellphones that would enable a user to dial a number by speaking the digits of a phone number or any saying any name in their address book without any training or pre-recording of voice prompts.

The final product is an embedded solution that was deployed on dozens of phones working on many of the major carriers. Because the solution was completely resident on the phone there was no burden on the network.

The digit dialing user interface was developed such that the digits were less confusable, using the rules that exist for construction of a valid phone number

The Name Dialing used the text of the name in the phone's address book and a intelligent use of pronunciation rules to create speech models that would be easily recognizable.

Key challenges included:

• working in the confined space of a cellphone's computing environment
• developing custom solutions for each cellphone model
• optimizing the name pronunciations