Overload Reduction
CAD programs use the mouse naturally and efficiently to
draw, select, and move objects. But the mouse is also used to select menus and
press buttons. This combination is usually inefficient because the cursor
must leave its drawing location to traverse to various menus and buttons, and
then must be carefully relocated to the original position. In fact, in
many instances today the mouse is overused, forcing the user to interrupt
natural and efficient activities in order to do something unnatural or
inefficient.
Voice commands eliminate extraneous mouse movements when
used to select menus and buttons. The mouse can stay in the drawing area while
properties are changed by voice. For example, think3 measured the
performance of the speech interface to its thinkdesign CAD tool and found
creating a model with the speech interface reduced the number of mouse clicks by
44 percent, eliminated all keyboard strokes, and was 23 percent faster than
creating the model without speech.
In addition, there are many applications where images
are viewed rather than altered. Voice commands allow drawings to be rotated and
positioned rapidly, hands-free. Voice can assist in annotation for drawings. The
Cedara Magnetic Resonance Imaging display, for example, lets doctors select,
orient, zoom and annotate MRI data without moving from their patient or from
their primary task, in fact, without taking their eyes of key locations in their
MRI.
Fifteen years ago, the mouse was a novelty with few
uses. Now many programs use the mouse almost exclusively. Voice recognition opens new possibilities for
application design, increasing productivity with new modalities, introducing new
postures to reducing stress, and replacing repetitive and unnecessary motion.
Next: High-speed
or hands-free data access
