The aim of this workshop is two-fold. First, it aims to establish a research community focused on design and evaluation of synthetic speech (TTS) interfaces that are tailored not only to goal oriented tasks (e.g., food ordering, online shopping) but also personal growth and resilience promoting applications (e.g., coaching, mindful reflection, and tutoring). Second, through discussion and collaborative efforts, to establish a set of practices and standards that will help to improve ecological validity of TTS evaluation. In particular, we will explore the topics such as: interaction design of voice-based conversational interfaces; the interplay between prosodic aspects (e.g., pitch variance, loudness, jitter) of TTS and its impact on voice perception. This workshop will serve as a platform on which to build a community that is better equipped to tackle the dynamic field of interactive TTS interfaces, which remains understudied, yet increasingly pertinent to everyday lives of users.

During the workshop, through interactive demonstrations, group discussions and prototyping, we will investigate the following questions:

• How to effectively tailor voices to different domains of application?

• How to ensure a comprehensive and comparable design, development, and evaluation of synthetic voices for user interfaces?

• How to increase users' involvement in the process of speech design?

• Which auditory cues are crucial to investigate, for what tasks, and in which contexts?

We encourage collaboration between academia and industry and welcome participation from anyone interested in synthetic speech design, development, and evaluation.  By bringing the interdisciplinary community together, our goal is to provide insights on how to improve engineering of speech interfaces that are tailored to specific tasks, and ensure higher ecological validity of their evaluation.

Statements of Interest (1 page, no specific format): If you are interested in participating in this workshop, we ask you to submit a 'statement of interest' (e.g., name, affiliation, bio/background, what you expect from the workshop, what topics would you like to discuss etc.). 

OPTIONAL*: Position Papers (up to 2 pages + references): In addition to a statement of interest, we encourage participants to submit a position paper in which they briefly describe their research on designing and evaluating user interfaces that feature synthetic speech, or their work on synthetic speech development. The position papers may be used for guiding prototyping scenarios during the workshop and provide additional context for group discussions.  When preparing your paper please follow for the single-column CEUR paper template (available here). All submission will undergo a single-blind peer review (i.e., author names and affiliations should be provided). At least one of the authors must attend the workshop in order for their accepted position paper to be featured in the IUI'24 CEUR-WS proceedings. Last year's proceedings can be accessed via following link: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3359/.

Position papers and statements of interest should be submitted to: mateusz.dubiel@uni.lu by 22nd January 2024
[Please include "IUI'24 Speech Design workshop" in your email subject line.]

Submissions due
22nd January 2024 (deadline extended)

Notifications sent
5th February 2024

Camera-ready submission deadline (position papers)
1st March 2024

Workshop date
18th March 2024