El-WOZ: a client-server wizard-of-oz open-source interface

• Main Authors: Pellegrini, Thomas, Hedayati, Vahid, Costa, Angela
• Other Authors: Équipe Structuration, Analyse et MOdélisation de documents Vidéo et Audio (IRIT-SAMoVA), Institut de recherche en informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), Université Toulouse Capitole (UT Capitole), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (UT2J), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Toulouse Mind & Brain Institut (TMBI), Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (UT2J), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université Toulouse Capitole (UT Capitole), Université de Toulouse (UT), Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID), Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (IST)-Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores (INESC), Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CLUNL), Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (NOVAFCSH), Universidade Nova de Lisboa = NOVA University Lisbon (NOVA)-Universidade Nova de Lisboa = NOVA University Lisbon (NOVA)
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2014
• Subjects: European Portuguese elderly speech; Wizard-of-oz; Speech recording interface; [INFO.INFO-GR]Computer Science [cs]/Graphics [cs.GR]; [INFO.INFO-TS]Computer Science [cs]/Signal and Image Processing; [INFO.INFO-TI]Computer Science [cs]/Image Processing [eess.IV]; [INFO.INFO-CV]Computer Science [cs]/Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition [cs.CV]; [INFO.INFO-AI]Computer Science [cs]/Artificial Intelligence [cs.AI]; Iceland
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-01145413; https://hal.science/hal-01145413/document; https://hal.science/hal-01145413/file/Pellegrini_13044.pdf

International audience Wizard of Oz (WOZ) prototyping employs a human wizard to simulate anticipated functions of a future system. In Natural Language Processing this method is usually used to obtain early feedback on dialogue designs, to collect language corpora, or to explore interaction strategies. Yet, existing tools often require complex client-server configurations and setup routines, or suffer from compatibility problems with different platforms. Integrated solutions, which may also be used by designers and researchers without technical background, are missing. In this paper we present a framework for multi-lingual dialog research, which combines speech recognition and synthesis with WOZ. All components are open source and adaptable toIn this paper, we present a speech recording interface developed in the context of a project on automatic speech recognition for elderly native speakers of European Portuguese. In order to collect spontaneous speech in a situation of interaction with a machine, this interface was designed as a Wizard-of-Oz (WOZ) plateform. In this setup, users interact with a fake automated dialog system controled by a human wizard. It was implemented as a client-server application and the subjects interact with a talking head. The human wizard chooses pre-defined questions or sentences in a graphical user interface, which are then synthesized and spoken aloud by the avatar on the client side. A small spontaneous speech corpus was collected in a daily center. Eight speakers between 75 and 90 years old were recorded. They appreciated the interface and felt at ease with the avatar. Manual orthographic transcriptions were created for the total of about 45 minutes of speech. different application scenarios