'Help Me, I Need More User Tests!'User Simulations as Supportive Tool in the Development Process of Spoken Dialogue Systems

摘要

In this paper we present our experiences in developing a spoken dialogue system supported by tests with a user simulation. Since the code of dialogue systems with mod est complexity can easily get unclear, it is almost impos sible to deliver error-free systems without user tests in the development process. We show how we included our user simulation environment SpeechEval in the develop ment process of three VoiceXML dialogue systems and discuss advantages and drawbacks compared to tests with real users.