The vocabulary problem in human-system communication

@article{Furnas1987TheVP,
  title={The vocabulary problem in human-system communication},
  author={G. Furnas and T. Landauer and L. Gomez and S. Dumais},
  journal={Commun. ACM},
  year={1987},
  volume={30},
  pages={964-971}
}
In almost all computer applications, users must enter correct words for the desired objects or actions. For success without extensive training, or in first-tries for new targets, the system must recognize terms that will be chosen spontaneously. We studied spontaneous word choice for objects in five application-related domains, and found the variability to be surprisingly large. In every case two people favored the same term with probability <0.20. Simulations show how this fundamental property… Expand
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1,573 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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1,573 Citations

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Citation Type

The Vocabulary Problem in Human-System Communication: an Analysis and a Solution
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Many, many alternative access words are needed for users to get what they want from large and complex systems and an optimal strategy, unlimited aliasing, is derived and shown to be capable of several-fold improvements. Expand
The Vocabulary Problem in Spoken Dialogue Systems
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Designers of spoken dialogue systems need to be able to predict and constrain the words people use in speech directed at these systems, and the potential for variability in word choices is enormous. Expand
Learning to Speak to a Spoken Language System: Vocabulary Convergence in Novice Users
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It is found that novice users successfully learn the form of system requests, achieving a significant decrease in ill-formed utterances, but the working vocabulary on which novice users converge is significantly smaller than that of expert users, and their rate of speech recognition errors remains higher. Expand
LEXICAL ENTRAINMENT IN SPONTANEOUS DIALOG
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It is often desirable to predict or constrain the lexical choices people make with spoken language systems, and some implications of this work for spokenlanguage systems are presented. Expand
Automated two-way entrainment to improve spoken dialog system performance
TLDR
An approach to the use of lexical entrainment in Spoken Dialog Systems is proposed, which aims to increase the dialog success rate by adapting the lexical choices of the system to the user's Lexical choices. Expand
Natural Language Processing: A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective
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This chapter examines the field of natural language processing as it relates to humancomputer interaction by focusing on its history, interactive application areas, theoretical approaches to linguistic modeling, and relevant computational and philosophical issues. Expand
Designing habitable dialogues for speech-based interaction with computers
TLDR
The concept of “habitability” is explored in relation to the design of dialogues for speech-based systems, and suggests that for speech input, spoken menu prompts may be more habitable than similar menus shown on a visual display. Expand
Do (and Say) as I Say: Linguistic Adaptation in Human–Computer Dialogs
TLDR
The article distills the results of the study into design recommendations for human–computer dialog systems and uses them to outline a model of dialog management that supports and exploits alignment through mechanisms for in-use adaptation of the system’s grammar and lexicon. Expand
The Vocabulary Problem in Collaboration
Previous research in information science and in human-computer interaction has shown that people tend to use different terms to describe a similar concept. Due to the unique backgrounds, training,… Expand
The Gesture Disagreement Problem in Free-hand Gesture Interaction
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It is found that the chance for users to produce the same gesture for a given task is below 0.355 on average, and offering a set of gesture candidates can improve the agreement score. Expand
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