Brown Institute

Transparency Series Seminar: Voice Interfaces with Joseph Price of Washington Post and Tommy O'Keefe, Vincent Farquharson & Nara Kasbergen of NPR
2018-11-16 17:00 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Brown Institute at Columbia, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, United States
Voice assistants are changing the way people search for and consume content. By one estimate, half of the adults in the US make use of voice interfaces — for now, mostly on their smartphones. But with the steady improvement of voice recognition, smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo, Google Home, Apple’s HomePod constitute new platforms for accessing information. How will journalism fare in this new ecosystem? Obviously, a direct reading of news stories written for the print or the web will tax the capabilities of current speech synthesis — not to mention the patience of a listener. In this discussion, we will get an overview of the current voice experience ecosystem and hear about the voice promised land: why voice interfaces are so powerful and alluring and what the future will look like. We will also hear about first hand experiences from folks at The Washington Post and NPR.
For registration and more information, go to transparency.brown.columbia.edu.

Transparency Series Workshop: Voice Interfaces with Washington Post & NPR
2018-11-17 10:30 - 17:00
Authoring experiences for a voice assistant or smart speaker is a combination of several distinct skillsets. Some conversational interfaces are driven by keywords, depending on users stating specific terms, while others involve artificial intelligence to create more natural conversations around content. The content itself is a product of both editorial work as well as programming effort to implement the conversation in code. In this workshop, students will prototype a journalistic application for a smart speaker. We will focus on Amazon’s Alexa platform and use simple graphical interfaces to design content delivery. Emphasis will be on developing insights into what makes a good conversation, reformatting and focusing on journalism that translates well to the platform.
