So, I will open our functional design meeting.

Mm-hmm.

So, I will play role of the secretary. As also Program Ma Manager. So, we will have the three presentations from the In Industrial Designer, User Interface Designer and um

Industrial Design.

Marketing Expert.

What's your talk?

Okay.

Marketing Experts..

Mm.

And after that we uh will have the uh new product requirements, the decision on the remote control functions, and we will close the meetings after. Mm so um I suppose the first to do the presentation will be the User Interface Designer.

Okay.

Um, so you're participant two?

One one.

No no no.

No you're.

One.

No,

Three three, it's three

I'm participant one..

sorry.

I I think I'm a.

Okay, never mind.

Okay.

'Kay, did you save your presentation?.

In one.

In one, sorry.

Yeah.

Isn't that technical functions?

No sure.

So you didn't save it maybe.

Uh

It's mine.

it's David Jordan. Course.

Alright, so.

Name's Jordan. So

David Jordan? Mm-hmm.

Mm yeah.

Mm-hmm.

so I'll I let David Jordan do his presentation.

Okay.

No, no. Uh this one doesn't want to be moved, I think.

Uh.

Too great for email then.

Okay, so. The first I will present the technical function design for user interface for our uh remote T_V_ control.

Yeah.

Uh I I will focus on user interface design.

Mm.

Um so move to the next slide. As we know our remote c rem remote T_V_ control it's very has very soph sophisticated functions, as we show from this picture. There's a lot of functions. Over, I think over s twelve or twenty s functions of a remote T_V_ control. So how can we um design a user interface with so sa with so many sophisticated functions? Um, let's move to next slide. Um. Yeah. So I so we want to design uh elegant, easy to use inter interface. A very good example is Google. As we know uh Google it's a very successful because his um powerful function, but with very easy to use user interface. Um so move to next s slide.

So my job is to uh design a Google T_V_ controller which I want to have sophisticated functions while with very easy to use user interface. So.

That's the end of the talk the end of the presentation.

So you propose to to have the remote control which will be powerful.

Uh With sophisticated functions,

So powerful,

but with very yeah powerful.

many functions and very easy to use.

Yes. Yep.

So, I dunno, it's maybe difficult to have both,

To merge the two system huh.

I mean the the one on the right doesn't look so simple

Yeah.

Yeah.

You mean this one?

Yeah.

Yeah you have to learn the manual before using this remote control, I suppose.

Mm yep.

But But this is.

But if we have very very good user interface

Yeah,

Yeah.

and then.

it take less time for user to learn how to use it.

Yeah.

Yeah you maybe you have some international standards, where you know, if you can use one is the other are or almost the same, so the sign.

Oh you mean for the yeah pic pictograms or things like that?

Yeah, yeah. For example, I dunno here, escape, you know, you have escape in computers you have, so if you see escape, you know that it should be the same.

Oh it should okay, yeah. The user should know.

So you have to The sh the user there for example the power off button it is something very international, you know that So.

Yeah um such as maybe the.

Yeah. So.

Go on, go back and.

Yeah, but the question is how to merge you know the Google system to the system, alright.

Yeah, that's gonna be the trick..

Yeah, that's my job..

That's your job.

That's my job. It's not the easiest I've got to.

It you.

So, you will propose us something which is yeah so powerful and easy to use.

Yep.

Okay.

Okay.

Powerful and easy to use.

So that's the point.

Yeah, that's the point.

So, next I propose the Industrial User Interface to present things.

Okay, okay.

So you you're.

Participant two. Yeah.

Um. Okay.

The rationale must be design, or.

So, Baba is the uh the Industrial Designer. Okay.

So we can move to the next slide. As you all know, you know m my job is to design you know uh to give an industrial design of the remote control. So the re basically the remote control will be, you know, infrared control, so the problem is how to relate the

Mm-hmm.

how to relate the remote control device, like for example this one I h I'm holding in my hand and the T_V_. So, this one is leather bu based

Mm.

but I propose a nifra infrared base you know, so so for me I think that it is better it's bet it's better to control T_V_

so you know, so it's it will be cheaper and it is less technology than, you know For the cheap price we have, for the cheap price we want to.

True.

So you mean that infrared control is a cheap technology?

I think it's cheaper than laser, so.

Okay.

Yeah. Do y you know the requirements for the remote control? Twelve, nearly thirteen,

What the cost is?

yeah. The cost.

Twelve, twelve a half.

Yeah, I think for the cost we want for the cost we want it's better to have uh uh Let's see. Yeah. You can move to the next slide, so. So the di the differen the findings you know what you find inside the re i the the system here inside it is just, you know a bulb and an infrared bulb, so here for example the infrared bulb will be here

Mm-hmm.

and the bulb it will be somewhere inside.

That might just So.

You can go to the next slide.

Okay.

I have some kind of pictures you know, here. You have the b the bulb, it is a blue the blue stuff here and the infrared and the infrared bulb it is the red stuff

Yeah.

you know and so and you have the other subcomponent that are not really here so important, so.

What is this?

This is in fact some other component that are in between the electrical de the electronic device.

Okay.

Look. But here what I wanted to emphasise it is just you know the bulb and.

Okay.

So and the next slide, it is the last one it's So it's I think it should be wire wireless re remote con Because you know, it's easier to manage and you know because you f the b the the battery problem can hold you know will you use a battery or the a wire to connected you. Or maybe some kind of thing that we can have both, but you know, I at my side prefer a wireless.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, so if you have some question I didn't answer?

What's the average price of this technology then?

Well the avera the average prices I think that this technology will cost, I dunno, around eight Euros, so. Or at least you know, the

So what, the wireless remote control? There's a wire with remote control?.

You'd yes, you can. It's so so bres you have to decide how how you will you know, put some energy inside, so you can think about wireless or you know it's it's a question that we can raise, so. We can think that you know, with the wire, you know, without a wire. We can have both also.

Okay.

So you think that uh a cable between the remote control and the T_V_ won't be a good idea.

Okay. Okay.

No it wou maybe it will be cheaper I dunno, I just may maybe you making a solu

But this is what you would like to ask the user first and I don't think the user would be ready to have a.

Yeah,

Wireless remote control.

but.

I don't think well, yeah, I don't think he would,

Yeah, but some pa I always want to have you know,

but in a sense.

sometime I want to have wire because you know.

Yeah but as Industrial Designer, do you think that it will be feasible to have uh linked or to have link between the remote control and the television?

I'm just asking you. Do you think it will be cheaper?

Uh, I don't think it will be too much.

Could you answer please?.

Okay.

Have to think about the question, you know,'cause it's I think that you know you can always you know.

Okay.

I think wha wha with the wire it's mm cheaper but you know the wireless it's more practical, so.

Yeah, but I think the wireless problem is more the um David Jordan's problem.

Mm-hmm.

The wire?

As it's yeah.

Yeah. True.

Okay, yeah.

I think it's more your problem. Mayb maybe you have just to to kind of research or try to ask people if they will like something wireless or not.

Mm-hmm.

Uh that's my job. That's the.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Now the.

So.

Yeah but, it should be an agreement, you know, because even if you can think of the wireless, it is it's it is the job of the the the g Graphical User Designer, but you know. If it is a lot cheaper and if you want to reach for example some the the money you have, if you want to use, so it can be good to have a wireless, it it is a question.

So

Okay.

just think of um the usability.

Design a wireless remote control..

Yeah. Just think of the problem. If when you have wireless remote control and if you lose it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's would be easier to have a link between the remote control and the television,

Well that's actually one of the point, yeah? True.

yeah.

This you will see in my presentation then.

So I will let you to do your presentation, so.

Yeah.

Okay.

Which is participant four. So just trying to answer all the questions, if the user would be happy to have something or something else uh. We've made a study, so could you go to next slide.

Sorry for the functional recurrence. So that's the standard method for marketing, okay. We had one hundred subjects, um, we observe their remote control use in a lab and then after all the experiments they had to fill up a questionnaire, um, and see what was okay or not for them.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So then it's some statistics about what we observed and what they answered. Um actually seventy five percent of the users find m the most remote controls uh ugly, okay, so that's.

You mean the loo the look, the outside?

The look, how it look like.

Yeah, the the look is is bad for them

Okay.

so uh it's your job, David, maybe. Then eighty percent of users would spend more money um actually if if the remote controls were not so ugly. So this is where we could have uh yeah, good market, I guess, if people are ready to pay more.

Yeah.

So it's it's interesting information, I think. And then um yeah, the remote controls like the one you've shown previously it's not so doesn't fit the user requirements sometime, because it's too many buttons and so on. So we should change this as well. And uh users are actually zapping a lot, so they're using the device intensively, that's something to take into account as well. And um, you know, ten percent of the buttons are actually used in the remote control. And uh this is one of the main point for me. But I'll come back to it later.'Kay. Could you go next slide? Uh, so as you said uh,

Mm-hmm.

remote controls are often lost somewhere in the room.

So this is from the experiments we've done,

so if we could solve this problem this would be interesting for the user, I think. Um it takes too much time to learn how to use the remote control for thirty five percent of the people. And uh remote control are really bad for R_S_I_ problems for twenty six percent of the users.

What is R_S_I_?

R_S_I_ is like, when you're using the same um doing the same movement several times, then you get injured.

Yeah.

Ah um okay..

Okay? So, those numbers are less important then the previous one, but still it has to be taken to count. So last slide. Um so my pres personal preferences for this problem is we have to meet the user needs. If we can make it look fancy then we might sell more than our uh concurrent, okay.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

And definitely if it could have less buttons, still maybe the same number of um functions, but less buttons,

Functions.

this would definitely be a good way of selling more. Okay.

Okay.

So.

Mm okay. And just to have uh an idea, do you think you as the User Interface Designer to would it be possible to have less buttons and still have the same functionality and to have powerful remote control, you think it's possible?

Yeah.

Sure? Yeah?

Yeah, I think possible. Because we can We can uh mix uh several function in one button.

Yeah.

So lets you then you have less buttons.

Yeah, but do you think it will be easy to use?

But I'm not sure.

Because if you have many functions just for one button it would be quite difficult for the user to know.

Yeah, remember the user is not happy to read the

The manuals.

Yeah,

manual.

I think the.

It's.

No you you can have a switch menu, so you can

Yeah, but it has to be intuitive.

well for example Yeah, I think so. Like for for example you can uh you can category the function i i into several classes. Then for um you can have a switch menu, so you put the switch menu to it it tend to this kind of this category of functions.

Yeah, okay. Okay,

Then you you put the switch button,

but.

then it switch to another category of functions. Yeah. For example, if you have remote control you you can rem you can control your T_V_ and also you can control your uh recorder.

With a.

So there's a different functions, but i if you you there's a button you can switch between control T_V_ and control your recorder. So we can has less buttons.

Yeah, but.

But what I'm not so sure is about how to make the remote control look funny look fancy, not funny.

Look fancy.

This is a question that should be asked to the If you ask the people, maybe the the marketing people.

Because different people have a different opinion about fancy. You know.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is something we sh

Because maybe a colourful is fancy for some people, but maybe simple and uh uniform colourful is fancy for some for other peoples, so.

Mm-hmm.

But this was first step and This was the first step, yeah.

I think the solution is to have many colours of you know instead of having one grey standard.

Yeah, but I think it will increase the price of the production of the remote control.

Specially distribution, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe.

If you need to have special colours for remote controls it will cost more.

Uh.

Yeah, personalised colour. Because you know.

Yeah, it will cost little bit more.

Yeah, because maybe some people prefer a red remote control,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

some people prefer black remote control.

Yeah, but this is what we would ask to the users, so.

And also f

Maybe we can have di di we can have uh several options,

Yeah.

so user can select which colour they prefer, so.

Yeah, but as soon as you speak about options, it means that the price increases,

Yeah,

Mm-hmm.

remember it's twelve Euros.

and we don't really want the price to be too too high, because we wanna be able to produce it. So, we want something fancy, as uh previously said, Florent, something very easy to use, powerful and also as uh it's written here, seventy five percent of users, they zap lot, so maybe just having many functions in one button is not that good if you want to zap a lot.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

And they don't really want to zap between functions of their remote control, they want to zap between channels on T_V_.

Mm-hmm.

So I think you have quite lot of points to to think about

Yeah.

and to discuss it with uh the other members.

Yeah, hmm.

Yeah.

So, is it okay for your presentation? Nothing else to to add?

Yeah, it's done, just yeah. If we would if we could remember like, not too many buttons and make it look fancy, I think it would make it.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm so.

So.

So, I had some new information about the product requirements, so you will have to take care of it of it in your thinking, in your designing of the remote control. So the first one is that um for the designing of the remote control we don't really want to use the teletext anymore, as it's something that's.

Mm-hmm.

It's is uh.

Lame, or.

No yeah, because now everybody has internet at home, so it's better to use internet then teletext.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So, you will have to think about it in your in in the design of your remote control,

Yep.

and also the remote control will only be used for television, so for y for you your designing, you're not you won't be uh you won't had um buttons to just to manipulate yeah to control the recorder or maybe the garage door or things like that.

Control. Mm-hmm..

It's.

Mm-hmm

because if we want to to do remote control

Mm.

which will be used for for the television, for the recorder, for the camcorder and all the others, it will become too complex and it will increase the pli the price and we can't do that. We really want to focus on the remote control for the television. Is it okay?

Okay. But there's balance between function and the cost.

So maybe it will be easier for you to to design it, to have very powerful and easy.

Yeah. Okay.

And also we want the image of the uh um real reaction be recognisable in the product, such as the colour and s the slogan.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I mean that's uh if uh you want to buy a remote control and if you go in a shop and if you see the remote control you will recognise directly that s it's our product.

Mm-hm.

Mm-hmm.

So you will have to use the colour of the product, of the um um

Okay.

of the uh of real reaction

Okay.

So.

and uh also.

So has to be yellow.

Yellow.

Yeah. As we say, we put the fashion in electronics, so it has to be a fashion remote control. Fancy, fashion, powerful, easy to use.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

Require lot of requirements,

For cheap remote control, yeah.

but.

Yeah. And cheap.

Yeah.

A low cost.

Yeah. But uh that's your your job to find something mm matches.

Yeah. Yeah,'cause what I'm thinking is how will you will connect the T_V_ to internet, so.

This is.

I don't think it's part of the remote control design anyway.

Maybe not,

It's maybe more in browsing.

but mayb

Yeah, but this this mean that your T_V_ would be able to, you know, connect to internet, you know, surf the web.

Yeah, there's that box in uh o of it.

Yeah.

A pi There's that box in the T_V_, so with the set box you you can connect internet with your T_V_.

Okay.

Ok

Hm-mm.

It's It's not so uh popular now..

It's pop I don't think it's popular, so that's the problem so. You had i if you are designing a remote control for you know

Mm.

the global usage,

Global,

so if people don't have the technology.

okay.

So.

Mm-hmm.

So everybody is okay with the new requirements?

So I I so As as for the colour, what what do you think?

I think it has to be yellow.

Yellow? Do you think that people like the colour yellow?.

Yeah.

Yellow? T_V_ remote control?.

Min

Maybe you can change the colour, but the image of the society has to be recognised.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

I think if you have you know th like a yellow ribbon here is the double R_. Or should be.

Why you go It has to be fashion.

Yeah, so. Doesn't need to be completely yellow,

So you have to.

Okay.

but just mm.

Yeah. It has to be a fashion and really be uh the image of the society. Just when you enter you say oh, oh, it's real reaction. Think it's a re reaction remote control, so.

Okay, okay. Okay.

And also it has to be attractive, of course,

Mm.

because if you want to sale to sell the remote control. It's okay?

Regarding the first line, what So we're just expecting no more use of the teletext.

Yeah.

And that's it.

Yeah.

But I dunno, but why, nobody's a threat to me.

It's already changed for.

I think it would be simpler.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So I will close the meeting, um just after that we'll have lunch break. And you will have in thirty minutes individual work. Uh Y you You will have as the I_D_ I don't remember what is industr Industrial Designer to put um pon

Industrial Designer.

Industrial Designer, yeah. Component component, yeah.

yeah, and the User Interface Designer to work on the user interface concept.

Okay.

And Florent to work my subject.

Yep.

And so specific instructions will be sent to you by your personal coach.

Okay.

It's okay?

Yeah.

I think the um session is closed.

Good.

And by the way, Mister David Jordan, please record your presentations in your own folder. Not in mine.

Okay Okay, that's clear.

Okay. Okay..

Should be better..

Question: Did anyone disagree with Florent about the idea of making the remote wireless?

Response: The participant named Florent is not a part of the meeting.

Question: What was David Jordan's opinion about the user interface design?

Response: There is no participant named David Jordan present in the meeting.

Question: What was decided regarding the teletext?

Response: In the meeting, it was decided to eliminate the teletext function from the remote control's design. This decision was made due to the increasing popularity of internet access in homes, which renders teletext obsolete.

Question: What was the marketing expert's personal preference for the remote control design?

Response: The marketing expert favored a design with fewer buttons that still provides the same functionalities. They emphasized that the remote should look fancy and appealing. Additionally, they highlighted that ten percent of the buttons are typically used in a remote control, indicating an opportunity for design optimization.

Question: Was the idea of having a customizable remote control color favored by the project manager?

Response: The topic of customizing the remote control color was raised by the User Interface Designer. They suggested that offering multiple color options would allow users to select their preferred color, however, the project manager responded that this approach could potentially increase production costs.

Question: Apart from the issue of remote control color customization, was there any other concern raised about the design?

Response:
Here are some other concerns raised during the meeting regarding the remote control's design:

* The participants discussed the potential need for a switch menu to navigate between different categories of functions, due to the limited number of buttons.
* The User Interface Designer expressed uncertainty about how to make the remote control look fancy, as different people have different preferences for what is considered fancy.
* The project manager raised the issue of production costs increasing if the remote control was to be offered in multiple colors.

Question: What was decided regarding the type of technology to be used for the remote control's connectivity?

Response: The participants decided to use an infrared base for the remote control's connectivity. This was deemed to be a cheaper and simpler technology compared to using laser. However, they agreed to explore the possibility of having both wired and wireless connectivity options.

Question: What was decided regarding the display of brand identity on the remote control?

Response: It was decided that the image of the brand, such as the color and slogan, should be recognizable in the product's design. The remote control should exhibit the fashion and identity of the brand.

Question: Can you summarize the concerns raised regarding the user interface design?

Response:
Some participants raised concerns about:
* How to merge the Google system with the existing system while considering international standards for pictogram usage.
* Whether to have a switch menu to navigate between different function categories due to the limited number of buttons.
* How to make the remote control look fancy, as different people have different preferences for what is considered fancy.
* Whether to offer multiple color options for the remote control, and the potential increase in production costs associated with it.

Question: Why did the industrial designer express concern about the feasibility and additional cost of a wireless remote control?

Response:
* The Industrial Designer expressed concerns about the feasibility of a wireless remote control due to potential technical challenges.
* They also raised the issue of additional cost associated with a wireless remote control compared to a wired one.


What channel am I on?

Channel.

Oh, channel two.

Make sure to turn your microphone on.

Channel.

There's a battery.

There we go.

OK. Your channel number's already on this blank sheet.

Yeah.

So you just If you can.

Channel five? Channel five.

Channel whatever.

I'm on channel five.

Camera one, camera two.

What am I?

Little low?

Channel four?

Channel five.

This number four? OK.

Channel five. OK.

The gai the gain's up at it what it usually is,

Is it?

but if you think it's Yeah. It's sort of a default. But I can set it higher if you like.

Oh. Maybe it should be a little higher.

Yeah?

It's not showing much. Test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test. OK, that that seems better? Yeah? OK, good. Ah, that's good, that's good. That's Ahh. Mmm. So I I had a question for Adam. Have we started already?

Well, we started recording, but Yeah.

Yeah. Is Jane around or?

I saw her earlier.

Uh.

I think.

She can just walk in, I guess, or.

Yeah. She'll probably come up.

Right.

Since we're starting late I figured we'd better just start.

Yeah. Great idea. I was gonna ask Adam to, uh, say if he thought anymore about the demo stuff because it occurred to me that this is late May and the DARPA meeting is in mid July. Uh, but I don't remember w what we I know that we were gonna do something with the transcriber interface is one thing, but I thought there was a second thing. Anybody remember?

Well, we were gonna do a mock - up, like, question answering or something, I thought, that was totally separate from the interface. Do you remember? Remember, like, asking questions and retrieving, but in a pre - stored fashion.

Mm - hmm. Right.

That was the thing we talked about, I think, before the transcriber.

Yeah.

Come on in.

Alright. So anyway, you have to sort out that out and get somebody going on it cuz we're got a got a month left basically. So.

You like these. Right? OK, good.

OK. Um OK. So, what are we g else we got? You got you just wrote a bunch of stuff.

No. That was all, um, previously here.

Oh.

I was writing the digits and then I realized I could xerox them,

Oh, oh.

because I didn't want people to turn their heads from these microphones. So. We all, by the way, have the same digit form, for the record. So.

That's cool.

Yeah.

So, the choice is, uh, which which do we want more, the the the comparison, uh, of everybody saying them at the same time or the comparison of people saying the same digits at different times that?

It's just cuz I didn't have any more digit sheets.

I know that. But, you know, which opportunity should we

So. Yeah.

Unison.

exploit? Unison.

I mean, it Actually it might be good to have them separately and have the same exact strings. I mean, we could use them for normalizing or something, but it of course goes more quickly doing them in unison.

I guess we'll see

I don't know.

i I guess it's dependent on

See how long we go.

how long we go and how good the snack is out there.

But anyway, they won't be identical as somebody is saying zero in some sometimes, you know, saying O, and so, it's not i not identical.

Yeah. Hmm. Get some advance intelligence.

Right. Right.

Yeah. We'd have to train.

We'd be like a chorus.

OK.

Yeah. We'd have to get s get some experience.

Greek chorus.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. Really boring chorus. Um. Do we have an agenda? Adam usually tries to put those together, but he's ill.

I've got a couple of things to talk about.

So. Yeah. Uh ju what what might those be?

Uh, IBM stuff and, um, just getting uh, meeting information organized.

Meeting info organized. OK. Um.

Are you implying that it's currently disorganized?

In my mind.

Is there stuff that's happened about, um, uh, the SRI recognizer et cetera, tho those things that were happening before with?

Well.

Y y you guys were doing a bunch of experiments with different front - ends and then with Is is that still sort of where it was, uh, the other day?

We're improving.

We're improving.

Yeah.

Now the the You saw the note that the PLP now is getting basically the same as the MFCC.

Right.

Right?

Yeah. Actually it looks like it's getting better.

Right. Oh.

So. But but it's not.

Just with with age, kind of.

With age. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

But, uh, that's not d directly related to me. Doesn't mean we can't talk about it. Um, it seems It looks l I haven't The It's The experiment is still not complete, but, um, it looks like the vocal tract length normalization is working beautifully, actually, w using the warp factors that we computed for the SRI system and just applying them to the ICSI front - end.

Mm - hmm. That's pretty funny.

Yeah.

OK.

So you just need to copy over to this one.

Just had to take the reciprocal of the number because they have different meanings in the two systems.

OK.

Ah! Yeah. Well, that's always good to do.

Yeah.

OK. OK. Uh.

But one issue actually that just came up in discussion with Liz and and Don was, um, as far as meeting recognition is concerned, um, we would really like to, uh, move, uh, to, uh, doing the recognition on automatic segmentations.

Yeah.

Because in all our previous experiments, we had the uh, you know, we were essentially cheating by having the, um, you know, the h the hand - segmentations as the basis of the recognition.

Mm - hmm.

And so now with Thilo's segmenter working so well, I think we should consider doing a.

Mmm. So.

Come on.

uh, doing.

Yeah. We But.

Y think you think we should increase the error rate.

Anyway. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That - that's what I wanted to do anyway,

Yeah.

so we should just get together and.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even The good thing is that since you, um, have high recall,  even if you have low precision cuz you're over - generating, that's good because we could train noise models in the recognizer for these kinds of, uh, transients and things that come from the microphones,

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

but I know that if we run recognition unconstrained on a whole waveform, we do very poorly because we're we're getting insertions in places what that you may well be cutting out.

Well.

Yeah.

Mm - hmm.

So we do need some kind of pre - segmentation.

We should we should consider doing some extra things, like, um, you know, retraining or adapting the the models for background noise to the to this environment, for instance.

Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

And, yeah, using Thilo's, you know, posteriors or some kind of or.

So.

right now they're they're discrete,

Yeah.

yes or no for a speaker, to consider those particular speaker background models.

Right.

So. There's lots of ins interesting things that could be done.

Yeah. Yeah. We should do that.

So.

Good. So, uh, why don't we, uh, do the IBM stuff?

Yeah. So, um, talked with Brian and gave him the alternatives to the single beep at the end of each utterance that we had generated before.

You had some thing about that? Right.

And so.

The, uh, Chuck chunks.

Yeah. The Chuck chunks.

Hmm.

Right. And so he talked it over with the transcriber and the transcriber thought that the easiest thing for them would be if there was a beep and then the nu a number, a digit, and then a beep, uh, at the beginning of each one

Yeah. Yeah.

and that would help keep them from getting lost. And, um, so Adam wrote a little script to generate those style, uh, beeps

Where'd you get the digits from?

and so we're I came up here and just recorded the numbers one through ten.

They sound really good.

So. Does it sound OK?

That's a great idea.

Yeah.

So, um Yeah. We just used those.

And do you splice them into the waveform? Or?

Yeah. He then he d I recorded Actually, I recorded one through ten three times at three different speeds and then he picked.

Right. Mm - hmm.

He liked the fastest one, so he just cut those out and spliced them in between, uh, two beeps.

It sounds like a radio announcer's voice. Really.

It will be funny uh.

Yeah, yeah.

Does it?

It will be funny when you're really reading digits, and then there are the chunks with with your digits in?

Yeah. With my.

Oh that's right.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Now actually,

That'll throw them,

we're Are we handling?

huh?

Uh, maybe we should have you record A, B, C for those or something.

Yeah.  Huh! Maybe. And she said it wasn't gonna the transcriber said it wouldn't be a problem cuz they can actually make a template, uh, that has beep, number, beep. So for them it'll be very quick

OK.

to to put those in there when they're transcribing.

Yeah.

So, um, we We're gonna send them one more sample meeting, uh, and Thilo has run his segmentation. Adam's gonna generate the chunked file. And then, um, I'll give it to Brian and they can try that out. And when we get that back we'll see if that sort of fixes the problem we had with, uh, too many beeps in the last transcription.

OK. Do w do what Do you have any idea of the turn - around on on those steps you just said?

Great.

Uh. Our s our On our side?

Uh.

or including IBM's?

Including IBM's.

Well, I don't know. The last one seemed like it took a couple of weeks. Um, maybe even three.

OK.

Uh, that's just the I B M side. Our side is quick. I mean, I I don't know. How long does your?

It should @ @ be finished today or something. Yeah.

Well, I meant the overall thing.

Yeah.

e e u u  The reason I'm asking is because, uh, Jane and I have just been talking, and she's just been doing. Uh, e a, you know, further hiring of transcribers.

Mm - hmm. Mm - hmm.

And so we don't sort of really know exactly what they'll be doing, how long they'll be doing it, and so forth, because right now she has no choice but to operate in the mode that we already have working.

Right.

And, uh, so it'd be It'd be good to sort of get that resolved, uh, soon as we could,

Yeah. I Yeah, I I hope @ @  we can get a better estimate from this one that we send them.

and then.

So. Um.

Mm - hmm.

I I don't know yet how long that'll take.

Yeah. Um I mean in particular I would I would really hope that when we do this DARPA meeting in July that we sort of have we're we're into production mode, somehow.

Mm - hmm.

You know, that we we actually have a stream going and we know how how well it does and how and how it operates.

Yeah.

I think that would that would certainly be a a very good thing to know.

Right. Right.

OK. Uh. Maybe before we do the meeting info organize thing, maybe you could say relevant stuff about where we are in transcriptions.

OK. So, um, we Uh, the transcribers have continued to work past what I'm calling " set one ", which was the s the set that I've been, uh OK, talking about up to this point, but, uh, they've gotten five meetings done in that set. Right now they're in the process of being edited. Um, the, um Let's see, I hired two transcribers today. I'm thinking of hiring another one, which will because we've had a lot of attrition. And that will bring our total to.

They die off after they do this for a while.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's it's various things.

Burn - out.

Yeah.

So, one of them had a baby. Um, you know, one of them really w wasn't planning.

Oh, that was an unfor unforeseen side effect of.

Eh, one of them, um, had never planned to work past January. I mean, it's th all these various things, cuz we, you know, we presented it as possibly a month project back in January and and and and Um, so it makes sense. Uh, through attrition we we've we're down to to two, but they're really solid. We're really lucky the two that we kept. And, um Well, I don't mean I don't mean anything against the others.  What I mean is we've got a good cause a good core. No. We had a good core.

Well, they won't hear this since they're going. They won't be transcribing this meeting.

Yeah, but still. I mean, I d it's just a matter of we w we're we've got, uh,

No backs.

two of the ones who who, um, ha had been putting in a lot of hours up to this point and they're continuing to put in a a lot of hours, which is wonderful, and excellent work. And so, then, in addition, um, I hired two more today and I'm planning to h hire a third one with this within this coming week, but but the plan is just as, uh, Morgan was saying we discussed this, and the plan right now is to keep the staff on the on the leaner side, you know, rather than hiring, like, eight to ten right now,

Mm - hmm.

because if the IBM thing comes through really quickly, then, um, we wouldn't wanna have to, uh, you know, lay people off and stuff. So. And this way it'll I mean, I got really a lot of response for for my notice and I think I could hire additional people if I wish to.

Yeah. An - and the other thing is, I mean, in the unlikely event and since we're so far from this, it's a little hard to plan this way in the unlikely event that we actually find that we have, uh, transcribers on staff who are twiddling their thumbs because, you know, there's, you know, all the stuff that that was sitting there has been transcribed and they're and they're faster the the pipeline is faster than uh, than the generation, um, eh, i in in the day e event that that day actually dawns, uh, I I bet we could find some other stuff for them to do.

Oh, yes.

So I I think that, eh, eh, a as we were talking, if we if we hire twelve, then we could, you know, run into a problem later. I mean, we also just couldn't sustain that forever. But but, um for all sorts of reasons but if we hire f you know, f we have five on staff five or six on staff at any given time, then it's a small enough number so we can be flexible either way.

Good. OK.

Good.

It'd be great, too, if, um, we can we might need some help again getting the tighter boundaries or some hand to experiment with, um you know, to have a ground truth for this segmentation work, which I guess you have some already that was really helpful, and we could probably use more.

Mmm, yeah. That was a thing I I planned working on, is, uh, to use the the transcriptions which are done by now, and to to use them as, uh.

Oh. Oh, the new ones

Yeah.

with the tighter boundaries. Yeah.

Yeah. And to use them for for training a or for fo whatever. Yeah. To to create some speech - nonspeech labels out of them, and Yeah, but that that's a thing w was w what I'm just looking into.

OK.

The the the pre - segmentations are so much are s so extremely helpful. Now there was, uh, I g guess So, a couple weeks ago I needed some new ones and it happened to be during the time that he was on vacation f for just very few days you were away. But it happened to be during that time I needed one,

Yeah.

so I so I started them on the non - pre - segmented and then switched them over to yours and, um, they, um you know, they always appreciate that when they have that available. And he's, uh, usually, eh, uh, um Um. So they really appreciate it. But I was gonna say that they do adjust it once in a while. You know, once in a while there's something like,

Yeah, sure.

um, and e Actually you talked to them. Didn't you? Did you? Have you?

Yeah. I talked to Helen.

And and and she was And so, I asked her I mean, They're very perceptive. I really want to have this meeting of the transcribers. I haven't done it yet, but I wanna do that and she's out of town, um, for a couple of weeks, but I wanna do that when she returns. Um, cuz she was saying, you know, in a in a span of very short period we asked It seems like the ones that need to be adjusted are these these these things, and she was saying the short utterances, uh, the, um.

Hmm.

Mmm. Yeah.

you know, I mean, you're You're aware of this. But but actually i it's so correct for so much of the time, that it's an enormous time saver

Yeah.

and it just gets tweaked a little around the boundaries. So.

That's great.

Um. Yeah. I think it'd be interesting to combine these.

Yeah.

Is there actually a record of where they change? I mean, you can compare, do a diff on the just so that we knew.

You could do it. It's it's complicated in that um, hhh, i hhh, i

Yeah. Actually, when when they create new yeah, new segments or something, it will be, uh, not that easy but hmm. I think one could do that.

I mean, if we keep a old copy of the old time marks

Yeah.

just so that if we run it we know whether we're which ones were cheating

Yeah. Yeah. That would be great, yeah, to know that.

and

There is a there is one problem with that and that is when they start part way through then what I do is I merge what they've done with the pre - segmented version.

which one would be good.

Yeah.

So it's not a pure it's not a pure condition. Wha - what you'd really like is that they started with pre - segmented and were pre - segmented all the way through.

Mm - hmm.

And, um @ @  I, uh the it wasn't possible for about four of the recent ones. But, it will be possible in the future

Yeah.

because we we're, um.

It would.

Mmm, that's great.

Yeah.

Yeah. As long as we have a record, I guess, of the original automatic one, we can always find out how well we would do fr from the recognition side by using those boundaries.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um.

Yeah.

You know, a completely non - cheating version.

Yeah.

Also if you need someone to record this meeting, I mean, I'm happy to for the transcribers I could do it, or Chuck or Adam.

Thank you.

OK. So, uh, u you were saying something about organizing the meeting info?

Yeah. So, um, uh, Jane and Adam and I had a meeting where we talked about the reorganization of the directory structure for all of the meeting.

Did you record it?

No. For all the Meeting Recorder data. We should have. Um. And so we've got a plan for what we're gonna do there. And then, Jane also s prepared a um, started getting all of the the meetings organized, so she prepared a a spreadsheet, which I spent the last couple of days adding to. So I went through all of the data that we have collected so far, and have been putting it into, uh, a spreadsheet with start time, the date, the old meeting name, the new meeting name, the number of speakers, the duration of the meeting, comments, you know, what its transcription status is, all that kind of stuff. And so, the idea is that we can take this and then export it as HTML and put it on the Meeting Recorder web page so we can keep people updated about what's going on.

Oh, great.

Um, I've gotta get some more information from Jane cuz I have some some gaps here that I need to get her to fill in, but so far, um, as of Monday, the fourteenth, um, we've had a total number of meeting sixty - two hours of meetings that we have collected. And, um Uh, some other interesting things, average number of speakers per meeting is six. Um, and I'm gonna have on here the total amount that's been transcribed so far, but I've got a bunch of uh, that's what I have to talk to Jane about, figuring out exactly which ones have have been completed and so forth. But, um, this'll be a nice thing that we can put up on the the web site and people can be informed of the status of various different ones. And it'll also list, uh, like under the status, if it's at IBM or if it's at ICSI, uh, or if it's completed or which ones we're excluding and and there's a place for comments, so we can, um, say why we're excluding things and so forth. So.

Now would the ones that, um, are already transcribed we h we have enough there that c you know, we've already done some studies and so forth and um, shouldn't we go through and do the business - es u of of having the, um, uh, participants approve it, uh, for approve the transcriptions for distribution and so forth?

Um, interesting idea. In principle, I I would say yes, although I still am doing some the final - pass editing, trying to convert it over to the master file as the being the channelized version and it's Yeah, it seems like I get into that a certain way and then something else intervenes  and I have to stop. Cleaning up the things like the, uh, uh, places where the transcriber was uncertain, and and doing spot - checking here and there. So, um, uh, I guess it would make sense to wait until th that's done, um, but but.

Well, le let me put in another sort of a milestone kind of as as I did with the, uh, uh the the pipeline.

Yeah.

Um, we are gonna have this DARPA meeting in the middle of July,

Yes.

and I think it w it'd be given that we've been we've given a couple public talks about it already, spaced by months and months, I think it'd be pretty bad if we continued to say none of this is available. Um.

It'll certainly be done by then. Yeah.

Right. So we can s we we wanna be able to say " here is a subset that is available right now "

Mm - hmm. That's right.

and that's has been through the legal issues and so forth.

That's right.

So.

Yeah. That's right. So that.

OK?

OK.

So, by before July.

And they don't have to approve, you know, th an edited version, they can just give their approval to whatever version

Well, maybe.

Well, in principle, yes. But, I mean, i if if if somebody actually did get into some legal issue with it then we

Bu Yeah. But th I mean, the editing will continue. Presumably if if s errors are found, they will be fixed, but they won't change the the content of the meetings.

Content, really.

Well, see, this is the this is the issue. Subtleties.

So.

Well, i if Jane is clarifying question question, then, you know, how can they agree to it before they know her final version?

The other thing, too, is there can be subtleties where a person uses this word instead of that word, which @ @  could've been transcribed in the other way.

Yeah.

Thing.

And no and they wouldn't have been slanderous if it had been this other word. You know?

I it you know, there there is a point at which I agree it becomes ridiculous because, you know, you could do this final thing and then a year from now somebody could say, you know, that should be a period and not a question mark. Right? And you don't you there's no way that we're gonna go back and ask everybody " do you approve this, uh, you know this document now? " So So I think what it is is that the the the the thing that they sign I I haven't looked at it in a while, but it has to be open enough that it sort of says " OK, from now on you know, now that I've read this, you can use do anything you want with these data. "

Mm - hmm.

And, uh But, i I think we wanna So, assuming that it's in that kind of wording, which I don't remember, um, I think i we just wanna have enough confidence ourselves that it's so close to the final form it's gonna be in, a year from now that they're.

Mm - hmm. I agree. Mmm. I totally agree. It's just, uh, a question of, uh, if if the person is using the transcript as the way of them judging what they said and whether it was slanderous, then it seems like it's it's i it needs to be more correct than if we could count on them re - listening to the meeting.

Uh.

Because it becomes, eh, in a way a a f uh, a legal document i if they've agreed to that.

Well, I forget how we end Right. I forget how we ended up on this, but I remember my taking the position of not making it so so easy for everybody to observe everything and Adam was taking the position of of having it be really straightforward for people to check every aspect of it including the audio. And I don't remember who won, Adam or me, but.

Well, if it's only the transcript, though I mean, th this this is my point, that that

uh, the Uh, that that's why I'm bringing this up again, because I can't remember how we ended up.

then it becomes.

That it was the transcrip He wanted to do a web interface that would make it.

Well, if it's just the audio Well.

that would give you access to the transcript and the audio. That's what Adam wanted.

Mm - hmm.

And I don't remember how we ended up.

I mean, with the web interface it's interesting, because you could allow the person who signs to be informed when their transcript changes, or something like that. And, I mean, I would say " no ". Like, I don't wanna know, but some people might be really interested and then y In other words, they would be informed if there was some significant change other than typos and things like that.

You decided you were whispering Satanic incantations under your breath when you were.

Well, I don't know what happened to the small heads thing, but I j Um, I'm just saying that, like, you know, you can sort of say that any things that are deemed.

They disappeared from view.

Anyway. I mean, I agree that at some point people probably won't care about typos but they would care about significant meaning changes and then they could be asked for their consent, I guess, if if those change. Cuz assumi assuming we we don't really distribute things that have any significant changes from what they sign anyway.

Tha That's How about having them approve the audio and not the transcripts?

Oh, my God.

That would be simpler,

Uh.

if we could count on them listening.

But no one will listen to the hours and hours of.

Talk.

Well, that's O K.

That's.

We just have to give them a chance to listen to it, and if they don't, that's their problem.

hmm, hmm.

You you d That's like.

Unfortunately, uh, in in the sign thing that they signed, it says " transcripts ".

No, I'm serious.

" You'll be you'll be provided the transcripts when they're available. "

Really?

Mmm.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I I I think

Yeah.

that's a lot to ask for people that have been in a lot of meetings.

Yeah.

W anyway, haven't we we've gone down this path a number of times. I know this can lead to extended conversations and and not really get anywhere, so let let me just suggest that uh, off - line that, uh, the people involved figure it out and take care of it before it's July.

Yes.

OK. So so that in July we can tell people " yes, we have this and you can use it ".

Yes. It's done, ready, available. Good.

Uh. So, let's see. What else we got? Uh. Don did did a report about his project in class and, uh an oral and written written version.

Well.

So that was stuff he was doing with you. Yeah.

I mean, it's I guess one thing we're learning is that the amount We have eight meetings there because we couldn't use the non - native all non - native meetings and it's, well, probably below threshold on enough data for us for the things we're looking at because the prosodic features are very noisy and so you you need a lot of data in order to model them. Um, so we're starting to see some patterns and we're hoping that maybe with, I don't know, double or triple the data with twenty meetings or so, that we would start to get better results. But we did find that some of the features that, I gue Jane would know about, that are expressing sort of the distance of, um, boundaries from peaks in the utterance and some local, um, range pitch range effects, like how close people are to their floor, are showing up in these classifiers, which are also being given some word features that are cheating, cuz they're true words. Um, so these are based on forced alignment. Word features like, um, word frequency and whether or not something's a backchannel and so forth. So, we're starting to see, I think, some interesting patterns.

So the dominant features, including everything, were those those quasi - cheating things. Right? Where these are.

Sometimes not.

I think it depends what you're looking at, a actually.

Yeah. Sometimes positions in sentences obviously, or in spurts, was helpful. I don't know if that's cheating, too.

Right. Um,

Spurts wouldn't be. Right?

spurts is not cheating except that of course you know the real words,

Right.

but roughly speaking, the recognized words are gonna give you a similar type of position.

Right. Would they give you the same number of words, though?

Right.

It's either early or late.

No

Not exactly, but i

But ra somewhat?

On the average.

Y yeah it should be. Well, we don't know and actually that's one of the things we're interested in doing, is a sort of.

Uh - huh.

Have you tried using just time, as opposed to number of words?

So.

I think ti uh Just p time position, like when the word starts?

Yeah.

I don't know if that was in the.

Well, no, I mean t time time position relative to the beginning of the spurt.

Eh You know, uh

Start.

Yeah,

Yeah. There's all these things to do.

uh, we didn't try it, but it's s

Like, there's a lot of different features you could just pull out.

Yeah. I mean that wouldn't be cheating because you can detect pause pretty well within the time.

Right.

Right.

How about time position normalized by speak

And it depends on speaking rate.

Yeah. Yeah.

speaking rate. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's actually why I didn't use it at first.

Yeah.

Mm - hmm.

But we one of the interesting things was I guess you reported on some te punctuation type.

Yeah.

finding sentence boundaries, finding disfluency boundaries, and then I had done some work on finding from the foreground speech whether or not someone was likely to interrupt, so where you know, if I'm talking now and someone and and Andreas is about to interrupt me, is he gonna choose a certain place in my speech, either prosodically or word - based. And there the prosodic features actually showed up and a neat thing even though the word features were available. And a neat thing there too is I tried some putting the speaker So, I gave everybody a short version of their name. So the real names are in there, which we couldn't use. Uh, we should use I Ds or something. And those don't show up. So that means that overall, um, it wasn't just modeling Morgan, or it wasn't just modeling a single person,

Mm - hmm.

um, but was sort of trying to, uh, get a general idea the model the tree classifier was trying to find general locations that were applicable to different speakers, even though there are huge speaker effects. So. The but the main limitation now is I because we're only looking at things that happen every ten words or every twenty words, we need more more data and more data per speaker. So. It'd also be interesting to look at the EDU meetings because we did include meeting type as a feature, so whether you were in a r Meeting Recorder meeting or a Robustness meeting did matter to interrupts because there are just fewer interrupts in the Robustness meetings.

Mm - hmm.

And so the classifier learns more about Morgan than it does about sort of the average person,

Mm - hmm.

which is not bad. It'd probably do better than Um, but it wasn't generalizing.

Yeah.

So it's And I think Don, um Well, we have a long list of things he's starting to look at now over the summer, where we can And he'll be able to report on more things in the future. But it was great that we could at least go from the you know, Jane's transcripts and the, uh, recognizer output and get it to this point. And I think it's something Mari can probably use in her preliminary report like, " yeah, we're at the point where we're training these classifiers and we're just reporting very preliminary but suggestive results that some features, both word and pro prosodic, work. " The other thing that was interesting to me is that the pitch features are better than in Switchboard. And I think that really is from the close - talking mikes, cuz the pitch processing that was done has much cleaner behavior than than the Switchboard telephone bandwidth.

W wh wh wh Better in what sense?

Um. Well, first of all, the pitch tracks are m have less, um, halvings and doublings than than Switchboard and there's a lot less dropout, so if you ask how many regions where you would normally expect some vowels to be occurring are completely devoid of pitch information,

Mm - hmm..

in other words the pitch tracker just didn't get a high enough probability of voicing for words for for, you know, five word

Hmm.

there are much fewer than in Switchboard. So the missing We had a big missing data problem in Switchboard and, so the features weren't as reliable cuz they were often just not available.

Could it have to do with the the lower frequency cut - off on the Switchboard?

So that's actually good. Ma - maybe. I mean, the tele we had telephone bandwidth for Switchboard and we had the an annoying sort of telephone handset movement problem that I think may also affect it.

Hmm.

So we're just getting better signals in in this data. Which is nice. So.

Yeah.

Anyway, Don's been doing a great job and we hope to continue with, um, Andreas's help and also some of Thilo's help on this,

Great.

Y

to to try to get a non - cheating version of how all this would work.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Has has, uh? We just I think, just talked about this the other day, but h has has anybody had a chance to try changing, uh, insertion penalty sort of things with the with the, uh uh, using the tandem system input for the?

Oh, yeah. I tried that. It didn't, um, help dramatically. The.

Were they out of balance? I didn't I didn't notice.

There were a little the relative number of I think there were a higher number of deletions, actually.

Oh.

So, you, uh So, actually it it preferred to have a positive er, negative insertion penalty,

Deletions?

which means that, um.

Uh - huh.

But, you know, it didn't change th the by adjusting that the, um.

OK.

Yeah. The error changed by probably one percent or so. But, you know, given that that word error rate is so high, that's not a.

OK. So that So that's So that's not the problem.

That's not the problem. No.

Yeah.

But, uh, we s just, um, uh you know, Chuck and I talked and the @ @  next thing to do is probably to tune the um, the size of the Gaussian system, um, @ @  to to this to this feature vector, which we haven't done at all. We just used the same configuration as we used for the for the standard system.

Hmm.

And, for instance, uh, Dan @ @  Dan just sent me a message saying that CMU used, um, something like ten Gaussians per cluster You know, each each mixture has ten Gaussians

Mm - hmm. Hmm. We're using sixty - four,

and and we're using sixty - four,

right?

so that's obviously a big difference

Yeah.

and it might be way off and give very poorly trained, uh, you know, Gaussians that way,

Hmm.

uh, an and poorly trained mixture weights. So so, we have The turn - around time on the training when we train only the a male system with, uh, you know, our small training set, is less than twenty - four hours, so we can run lots of uh, basically just brute force, try a whole bunch of different um, settings.

OK.

And, uh, with the new machines it'll be even better. So.

Yeah. We get twelve of those,

Yeah.

huh?

But the PLP features work um, uh, you know, continue to improve the,

OK.

um As I said before, the uh using Dan's, uh, uh, vocal tract normalization option works very well. So, um, @ @  I ran one experiment where we're just did the vocal tract le normalization only in the test data,

Mm - hmm.

so I didn't bother to retrain the models at all, and it improved by one percent, which is about what we get with uh, with, you know, just @ @  actually doing both training and test normalization, um, with, um, the, uh uh, with the standard system. So, in a few hours we'll have the numbers for the for retraining everything with vocal tract length normalization and So, that might even improve it further.

Great.

So, it looks like the P L - fea P features  do very well now with after having figured out all these little tricks to to get it to work.

Yeah.

So.

Good.

Wait. So you mean you improve one percent over a system that doesn't have any V T L in it already?

Exactly. Yeah.

OK.

Yeah. OK. So then then we'll have our baseline to to compare the currently hideous, uh, uh, new thing with.

Right. a Right. And and what that suggests also is of course that the current Switchboard MLP isn't trained on very good features.

But Yeah.

Uh, because it was trained on whatever, you know, was used, uh, last time you did Hub - five stuff, which didn't have any of the.

Right. But all of these effects were j like a couple percent.

Uh.

Right? I mean, y the.

Well, but if you add them all up you have, uh, almost five percent difference now.

Add all of them. I thought one was one point five percent and one was point eight.

Yeah. And now we have another percent with the V T

That's three point three.

Um, actually, and it's,  um, What's actually qu interesting is that with um, well, you m prob maybe another half percent if you do the VTL in training, and then interestingly, if you optimize you get more of a win out of rescoring the, um, uh, the N best lists, uh, and optimizing the weights, um, uh than.

Than you do with the standard?

Yeah. So.

Yeah. But the part that's actually adjustment of the front - end per se as opposed to doing putting VTLN in or something is it was a couple percent.

Right.

Right? It was it was there was there was one thing that was one and a half percent and one that was point eight. So and and let me see if I remember what they were. One of them was, uh, the change to, uh because it did it all at once,  to uh, from bark scale to mel scale,

Mm - hmm.

which I really feel like saying in quotes, because @ @  they're essentially the same scale but the but but but any i individual particular implementation of those things puts things in a particular place.

Yeah. Why did that cha?

Mm - hmm.

So that's why I wanted to look I still haven't looked at it yet. I I wanna look at exactly where the filters were in the two,

Mm - hmm.

and it it's probably something like there's one fewer or one more filter in the sub one kilohertz band

Mm - hmm.

and for whatever reason with this particular experiment it was better one way or the other.

Hmm.

Um, it could be there's something more fundamental but it you know, I I don't know it yet. And the other and the other that was like one and a half or something, and then there was point eight percent, which was what was the other thing?

Well, that was combined with the triangular. Right?

Yeah. Those those two were together.

Yeah. Right.

We d weren't able to separate them out cuz it was just done in one thing. But then there was a point eight percent which was something else.

The low - frequency cut - off.

Do you remember the? Oh, yeah. So that was that was, uh that one I can claim credit for, uh, i in terms of screwing it up in the first place. So that someone e until someone else fixed it, which is that, um, I never put when I u We had some problems before with offsets. This inf this went back to, uh, I think Wall Street Journal.

Hmm.

So we we had, uh ea everybody else who was doing Wall Street Journal knew that there were big DC offsets in th in these data in those data and and and nobody happened to mention it to us,

Hmm.

and we were getting these, like, really terrible results, like two, three times the error everybody else was getting. And then in casual conversation someone ment mentioned " uh, well, I guess, you know, of course you're taking care of the offsets. " I said " what offsets? "

Mm - hmm.

And at that point, you know, we were pretty new to the data and we'd never really, like, looked at it on a screen and then when we just put it on the screen  and wroop!

Mm - hmm.

there's this big DC offset. So, um, in PLP

There was a like a hum or some or when they recorded it?

No. It's just, it it's it's not at all uncommon for for recorded electronics to have different, um, DC offsets.

Or just? Huh.

It's it's, you know, no big deal. It's you know, you could have ten, twenty, maybe thirty millivolts, whatever, and it's consistently in there. The thing is, most people's front - ends have pre - emphasis with it, with zero at zero frequency, so that it's irrelevant. Uh, but with P L P, we didn't actually have that. We had we had the equivalent of pre - emphasis in a a, uh, Fletcher - Munson style weighting that occurs in the middle of P L but it doesn't actually have a zero at zero frequency,

Hmm.

like, eh, uh, typical simple fr pre - emphasis does. We had something more fancy. It was later on it didn't have that. So at that point I reali " oh sh we better have a have a high - pass filter " just, you know just take care of the problem. So I put in a high - pass filter at, uh, I think ninety ninety hertz or so uh, for a sixteen kilohertz sampling rate. And I never put anything in to adjust it for different different sampling rates. And so well, so, you know, the code doesn't know anything about that and so this is all at eight kilohertz and so it was at forty - five hertz instead of at instead of at ninety.

Hmm.

So, um, I don't know if Dan fixed it or or, uh, what he.

Well, he made it a parameter.

He made it a parameter. So. Yeah, I guess if he did it right, he did fix it and then and then it's taking care of sampling rate, which is great.

What what is the parameter?

He had a.

Is it, uh, just the f lower cut - off that you want?

It's called, uh, H - HPF.

H Yeah. Does HPF on on his feat feature.

u And but HPF, you know, when you put a number after it, uses that as the hertz value of the cut - off.

Mm - hmm. Oh, OK.

Yeah.

So.

I mean, frankly, we never did that with the RASTA filter either,

Mm - hmm.

so the RASTA filter is actually doing a different thing in the modulation spectral domain depending on what sampling rate you're doing, which is another old old bug of mine.

Mm - hmm.

But, um Um. So that that was the problem there was th we we we had always intended to cut off below a hundred hertz

Mm - hmm.

and it just wasn't doing it, so now it is. So, that hep that helped us by, like, eight tenths of a percent. It still wasn't a big deal.

OK. Well, but, um Well, uh, again, after completing the current experiments, we'll we can add up all the uh differences

Oh, yeah.

and and an

But but, I guess my my point was that that, um, the hybrid system thing that we did was, uh, primitive in many ways.

Y Right.

And I think I agree with you that if we fixed lots of different things and they would all add up, we would probably have a a a competitive system. But I think not that much of it is due to the front - end per se. I think maybe a couple percent of it is, as far as I can see from this.

Mm - hmm.

Uh, unless you call well, if you call VTL the front - en front - end, that's, uh, a little more. But that's sort of more both, kind of.

One experiment we should we'll probably need to do though when um, at some point, is, since we're using that same the net that was trained on PLP without all these things in it, for the tandem system, we may wanna go back and retrain,

Right? But.

Well, that's what I meant, in fact. Yeah.

yeah, yeah, for the tandem. You know, so we can see if it what effect it has on the tandem processing.

So so, the thing is is do we expect?

Mm - hmm.

eh At this point I'm as I mean, you know e I'm wondering is it Can we expect, uh, a tandem system to do better than a properly trained you know, a Gaussian system trained directly on the features with, you know, the right ch choice of parameters?

Well, that's what we're seeing in other areas. Yes. Right? So, it's so, um, um.

So, we But but we may not. I mean, if it doesn't perform as well, we may not know why. Right? Cuz we need to do the exact experiment.

Right.

I mean, the reason to think it should is because you're putting in the same information and you're transforming it to be more discriminative. So. Um. Now the thing is, in some databases I wouldn't expect it to necessarily give you much and and part of what I view as the real power of it is that it gives you a transformational capability for taking all sorts of different wild things that we do, not just th the standard front - end, but other things, like with multiple streams and so forth,

Mm - hmm.

and allows you to feed them to the other system with this through this funnel. Um, so I think I think that's the real power of it. I wouldn't expect huge in huge improvements. Um, but it should at least be roughly the same and maybe a little better.

Mm - hmm.

If it's, you know, like way way worse then, you know.

Right.

So, Morgan, an another thing that Andreas and I were talking about was, so @ @  in the first experiment that he did we just took the whole fifty - six, uh, outputs and that's, um, basically compared to a thirty - nine input feature vector from either MFCC or PLP.

Mm - hmm. Mm - hmm.

But one thing we could do is.

Let let me let me just ask you something. When you say take the fifty - six outputs, these are the pre final nonlinearity outputs

Yeah. Through the regular tandem outputs.

and they're and through the KLT.

Through the KLT. All that kinda stuff.

OK. And so so then you u Do you use all fifty - six of the KLT

That's what we did.

or?

Right? So one thing we were wondering is, if we did principal components and, say, took out just thirteen, and then did deltas and double - deltas on that.

OK. Yes.

so we treated the th first thirteen as though they were standard features.

Yes. Yeah.

I mean, did Dan do experiments like that to?

Uh. Talk with Stephane. He did some things like that. It was either him or Carmen. I forget.

Mm - hmm.

Mmm.

I mean these were all different databases and different you know, in HTK and all that,

Yeah.

so i it it may not apply. But my recollection of it was that it didn't make it better but it didn't make it worse.

Hmm.

But, again, given all these differences, maybe it's more important in your case that you not take a lot of these low - variance, uh, components.

Cuz in a sense, the net's already got quite a bit of context in those features,

Yeah.

so if we did deltas and double - deltas on top of those, we're getting sort of even more.

Which could be good or not.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Worth trying.

But there the main point is that, um, you know, it took us a while but we have the procedure for coupling the two systems debugged now and I mean, there's still conceivably some bug somewhere in the way we're feeding the tandem features uh, either generating them or feeding them to this to the SRI system,

Mm - hmm. Yeah.

but it's.

There might be, cuz that's a pretty big difference.

Yeah. And I'm wondering how we can how we can debug that.

But

Yeah.

I mean how Um.

Hmm.

I'm actually f quite sure that the feeding the features into the system and training it up,

What if?

that that I think that's this that's essentially the same as we use with the ce with the P L P fe features. And that's obviously working great. So. I um.

Yeah. There could be a bug in in the somewhere before that.

There we could the another degree of freedom is how do you generate the K L T transform?

Mm - hmm.

Right? We to

That's.

Right.

well, and another one is the normalization of the inputs to the net.

Yeah.

These nets are trained with particular normalization and when that gets screwed up it it can really hurt it.

I'm doing what Eric E Eric coached me through then that part of it, so I'm pretty confident in that.

OK.

I mean, the only slight difference is that I use normalization values that, um, Andreas calculated from the original  PLP,

Right.

which is right.

Right.

N Yeah. So, I u I do Oh, we actually don't do that normalization for the PLP, do we? For the st just the straight PLP features?

No. The the SRI system does it.

S R I system does that. Right.

Yeah.

Right. Well, you might e e

So, there's there is there is room for bugs that we might not have discovered,

So that's that's another Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm - hmm.

Yeah. I I would actually double check with Stephane at this point,

but.

cuz he's probably the one here I mean, he and Dan are the ones who are at this point most experienced with the tandem

Mm - hmm.

thing and there may there may be some little bit here and there that is not not being handled right.

Yeah. It's hard with features, cuz you don't know what they should look like. I mean, you can't just, like, print the the values out in ASCII and, you know, look at them, see if they're.

Not unless you had a lot of time

Well.

and.

eh, and also they're not I mean, as I understand it, you you don't have a way to optimize the features for the final word error. Right?

Right.

I mean, these are just discriminative, but they're not, um, optimized for the final.

They're optimized for phone discrimination, not for.

Right. So it there's always this question of whether you might do better with those features if there was a way to train it for the word error metric that you're actually that you're actually.

That's right. Well, the other Yeah, th the.

Mm - Mmm.

Well, you actually are. But but it but in an indirect way.

Well, right. It's indirect, so you don't know.

So wha w what an and you may not be in this case, come to think of it, because, uh, you're just taking something that's trained up elsewhere. So, what what you what you do in the full procedure is you, um, uh, have an embedded training. So in fact you the the net is trained on, uh, uh, a, uh, Viterbi alignment of the training data that comes from your full system. And so that's where the feedback comes all around, so that it is actually discriminant. You can prove that it's it's a, uh If you believe in the Viterbi assumption that, uh, getting the best path, uh, is almost equivalent to getting the best, uh, total probability, um, then you actually do improve that by, uh by training up on local local, uh local frames. But, um, we aren't actually doing that here, because we did we did that for a hybrid system, and now we're plugging it into another system and so it isn't i i i it wouldn't quite apply here.

Do y

So another huge experiment we could do would be to take the tandem features, uh, do SRI forced alignments using those features, and then re - do the net with those.

Mm - hmm.

Mmm, uh Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah.

So that you can optimize it for the word error.

But.

Yeah. Another thing is since you're not using the net for recognition per se but just for this transformation, it's probably bigger than it needs to be.

Yeah.

So that would save a lot of time.

And there's a mismatch in the phone sets. So, you're using a l a long a larger phone set than what.

Mmm.

Yeah. Actually all those things could could could could, uh could affect it as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

The other thing, uh, just to mention that Stephane this was an innovation of Stephane's, which was a pretty neat one, uh, and might particularly apply here, given all these things we're mentioning. Um, Stephane's idea was that, um, discriminant, uh, approaches are great. Even the local ones, given, you know, these potential outer loops which, you know, you can convince yourself turn into the global ones. Um, however, there's times when it is not good. Uh, when something about the test set is different enough from the training set that that, uh, the discrimination that you're learning is is is not a good one.

Mm - hmm.

So, uh, his idea was to take as the input feature vector to the, uh, Gaussian mixture system, uh, a concatenation of the neural net outputs and the regular features.

Oh, we already talked about that.

Yeah. That.

Yeah.

El

Mm - hmm.

Didn't you did you do that already

Yeah. No, but we we when when we when I first started corresponding with Dan about how to go about this, I think that was one of the things that we definitely went there.

or? Oh. That makes a lot of sense. Huh.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that Stephane wasn't the first to think of it,

Yeah.

but actually Stephane did it

Uh - huh. And i does it help?

and and and it helped a lot.

Oh, OK.

Yeah. So that's that that's our current best best system in the, uh uh, in the Aurora thing.

Oh. OK.

Yeah. That makes sense.

And do you do a KLT transform on the con on the combined feature vector?

Yeah.

As you should never do worse.

I I, uh, missed what you said.

Do you d you do a KLT transform on the combined feature vector?

Yeah.

OK.

Well, actually, I, uh you should check with him, because he tried several different combinations.

Because you end up with this huge feature vector, so that might be a problem, a unless you do some form of dimensionality reduction.

Yeah. I, uh, th what I don't remember is which came out best. So he did one where he put o put e the whole thing into one KLT, and another one, since the the PLP things are already orthogonalized, he left them alone and and just did a KLT on the on the on the net outputs

Mm - hmm. Mmm.

and then concatenated that. And I don't remember which was better.

Did he did he try to? So he always ended up with a feature vector that was twice as long as either one of the?

No. I don't know, i I I don't know. You have to check with him.

Yeah.

OK. Actually, I have to run.

I'm into big ideas these days.

Yeah.

Uh.

We need to close up cuz I need to save the data and, um, get a call.

Not to mention the fact that we're missing snacks. Yeah.

Right.

Uh

Did people wanna do the digits

Um.

or, um, do them together?

I I g I think, given that we're in a hurry for snacks, maybe we should do them together.

I don't know. Should we just? OK. I mean, are we trying to do them in synchrony? That might be fun.

Well, it's it's it's not You know, it's not gonna work out

Adam's not here, so he's not here to tell me no.

but we could we could just, uh, uh, see if we find a rhythm, you know, what.

Sure.

Uh, O's or zeroes, we wanna agree on that?

Maybe just whatever people would naturally do? I don't know.

Oh, but if we were a singing group, we would wanna decide. Right?

Be harmony. Yeah.  Yeah.

Mine's identical to yours.

We might wa

Is that correct?

Sorry. So I set up and we didn't have enough digit forms

Oh. I see.

So these are excellent.

so I xeroxed the same one seven times.

Oh. I see.

Why don't we do zer i Anyone have a problem with saying zero? Is zero OK?

No.

Yeah.

OK. One and a two and three.

e

Once more with feeling.

And th

No, just k just kidding. Oh, yeah. It was.

Question: Why did Professor F think it would be a good idea to hire more transcribers?

Response:
- Professor F believed it would be beneficial to hire more transcribers to handle the extra workload and scale up transcription efforts of the recorded meetings.
- They also noted that there was attrition among the team and they had lost two transcribers, thus emphasizing the need for expansion.

Question: Did Professor F suggest combining the outputs of the neural net with the regular features as the input to the Gaussian mixture system?

Response:
Yes, Professor F suggested concatenating the neural net outputs with the regular features as the input to the Gaussian mixture system.

* This idea was brought forth by Stephane and involved using a combination of discriminant and regular approaches to improve the system's performance.
* He mentioned that Stephane's approach had proven to be quite effective and was currently their best system in the Aurora project.

Question: What did Professor F think about including timestamps in the recordings?

Response: The topic of including timestamps in the recordings was not brought up in the meeting.

Question: What were Professor F's thoughts on factoring in temperature when conducting recordings?

Response: The topic of temperature was not brought up in the meeting.

Question: What did Professor F and the team decide on regarding format standardization for the transcribed meetings?

Response:
The topic of standardizing the format for the transcribed meetings was discussed in the meeting.
* The participants decided to use a spreadsheet to organize the meeting information.
* The spreadsheet would include details such as start time, date, meeting name, number of speakers, duration, and comments.
* They agreed to export the spreadsheet as HTML and make it available on the Meeting Recorder website.
* The purpose of this was to keep people updated on the status of the transcriptions and to provide a central location for accessing the information.

Question: What was their rationale for selecting a spreadsheet as the organizational tool?

Response: The meeting does not contain the answer to this question.

Question: Besides the spreadsheet, were there any other tools or methods considered for organizing the meeting information?

Response: The topic of using alternative tools or methods for organizing the meeting information was not discussed in the meeting.

Question: Could you provide a concise summary of the key points discussed in the meeting, touching on the most significant decisions made and the rationale behind them?

Response:
* The meeting focused on discussing updates and organizing information related to the Meeting Recorder project.
* Key decisions included:
  * Expanding the transcription team by hiring additional transcribers to manage workload and address attrition.
  * Implementing a spreadsheet for organizing meeting information, including details like start time, speakers, duration, comments, and transcription status.
  * Exporting the spreadsheet as HTML and publishing it on the Meeting Recorder website to provide centralized access and status updates.

Question: According to the meeting, what were the ideas or suggestions put forth by Adam regarding the demo material and interface for the question-answering system?

Response: The meeting did not discuss ideas or suggestions by Adam regarding the demo material and interface for the question-answering system.

Question: Did Professor F note any improvements in recognition accuracy for meetings when the IBM chunks were added to the recordings?

Response: Professor F did not discuss any observations regarding improvements in recognition accuracy for meetings when the IBM chunks were added to the recordings.


Here we go. Welcome everybody. Um, I'm Abigail Claflin. You can call me Abbie.'S see. PowerPoint, that's not it. There we go. So this is our kick off meeting. Um and I guess we should all get acquainted. Let's shall we all introduce ourselves?

Hi I'm Chiara, I'm the um Marketing Expert. Um, would you like me to talk about my aims at the moment, or would you like me to just say my name and then we can talk about business later?

I think we'll get around to that, yeah. So this is just introductions yeah.

We'll get round to that later. My name is Chiara and I'm the Marketing Expert.

Okay. I forgot to s say I'm the Project Manager but I figured you all knew that already,

um so.

I'm Stephanie and I am the User Interface Designer.

I'm Krista and I'm the Industrial Designer.

Okay. Um so f here's our agenda for today. Um we're gonna do some tool training, project plan and discuss then close. Um so. So our aim is to produce a remote control that is original, trendy and user friendly. And to do this, we have to um there's certain things we have to consider about functional aspects and conceptual design of the thing. So. We'll get to that. Oh there it is. Right. Functional design, conceptual design and detailed design. So throughout our next couple of meetings we'll we'll be covering these things. Um so we're gonna try out our white board. If we'll all draw our favourite animal, to sum up the characteristics of that animal. Okay.

So you want us to draw it and then talk about it? Or just draw it?

I think both..

Yeah. Both. Yeah.

Okay. Why don't we do both. Right.

Who starts? We ought to decide who starts and all that. No?

Any volunteers?

Uh-huh.

Does anyone know what they wanna draw?.

Mm, I gotta think about it for a second like. Uh Does it have to be functional, trendy and user friendly?.

I don't think so.

Um. Okay, I'll draw. I'll draw one.

Make sure my things here. Uh-oh. Right. Okay, my favourite animal is see. Oops.

A dolphin.

Yeah, it's.

'S like playing Pictionary.

Yeah, I guess it has a fin on top too, yeah. It's my dolphin.

So what characteristics do you like about your animal?.

I like its tail.

Um, no, I think dolphins are really uh I dunno, they're smart and they they're cute and they like swimming and that's cool, like.

They're graceful.

they're graceful yeah, and they're so.

Sleek.

Yeah they're sleek

and they look intelligent and I don't know, they're I guess it's the whole like binocular vision thing.

I don't know how intelligent that one looks.

Yeah he he doesn't look that smart. He's a I dunno um they're I think it's cool the the um the interaction that or the th things that the reasons people seem to like you know you get ex you know people are sitting on the beach and p they're like oh look there's dolphins and it's kinda like but they're you know they jump around in the water and they're happy and they're mammals, but they swim..

Yes. Does anybody else wanna draw their animal?

Suppose I can draw an animal, yeah.

Uh-oh there goes the ten.

Yeah.

It's a cat..

I don't know. They sleep all day, they're easy to draw.

Do you wanna anything?

Uh yeah.

I dunno if the the.

I think the pen is running out of.

Well I had the cat as well, but uh I've got a spare one.

ah.

So I'll use the spare one. Um but it's harder to draw um.

And the pen's dying.

Um.

A horse.

Horse.

Uh. Um I don't really know how the legs go,

That's very good.

but anyway I will do that. Um, and the main reason is they're pretty. I think they're very pretty and they go well with the environment, and I like the way they run and I used to do horse riding and they're just very sort of sturdy and nice animals. And I like the way um they feel, sort of under under the hand, I think that's pretty much it. Um.

Yeah. This cord's Uh. Right. Actually I haven't thought of anything yet. Uh It's a pig.

So I'm thinking we should design a remote control that's water resistant, strong and furry. What do you think, yeah? This is.

And furry.

yeah, well like a cat, you know, soft yeah.

Textile tactile, tactile remote control.

Although uh I'll just put there. Right.

You're dragging a you have a tail.

Oh my gosh, this is disastrous. Sorry about that. Okay. So moving on. Our selling price goal is twenty five Euro and profit aim is fifty million Euro. So I'm guessing that we're not actually in Scotland, we're in some European country. Um, and we will hope to sell this internationally.

Sorry can you just say that what's the what are our price goals again?

Um selling price is twenty five Euro. Profit aim fifty million Euro.

Okay.

How many should we sell then? Um, a lot,

Anyone a mathematician?.

two two two million, two mi no, more f four million.

Two million.

Four million. And it.

well it's the profit so if a profit for each is twelve fifty, that'll do four million.

Oh, yeah.

It is a lot. Uh.

So f that's a fifty percent um uh. Um, I don't know what these mean because I didn't actually make the slide-show. Experience with remote control. So I guess we have to reflect on our experiences with remote controls to decide what um we would like to see in a convenient, practical, nice remote control. Um so do we have any initial ideas for uh how this remote control should be designed or formatted or the the buttons it should have.

Um, I think one thing is that it should be easy to find

I was thinking that too.

bec yeah bec

Yeah.

I think we should design something that has like a so you can like somehow like you I mean you always know where your T_V_ is, so just have a call button,

I've always wanted that,

Yeah.

so like you can push a button on your T_V_.

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah.

I mean you have it for the portable phone, so why not yeah.

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, so you should have a call button on your television to be able to find your remote control.

Yeah. And even I think a little light. Um or even a maybe a vib a vibrating thing. I dunno but someth because it's usually under the sofa.

Yeah. Yeah.

In which case you're going to be l but if it has a sort of signal which isn't any sound.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's expensive maybe to.

I don't yeah I mean it but like I mean.

Maybe call is enough. But yeah.

just I mean like your phone even just has so like it can vibrate, it can light up and make noise and I dunno.

Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.

What if it had something like um just like a magnet on the back of it and you could I mean j just to have some place to put it besides like a base. You know like a portable phone has a base,

Yeah. Yeah, or if it had a yeah.

like just to have a home for it.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Yeah,

'Cause people just stick it on top of their T_V_, but the point of having a remote is not to have to walk over to the T_V_, so.

I mean.

Well that's why it's always in the couch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, in in the couch.

I dunno, it seems like though that that would be hard,'cause you not you're not gonna be lazy anyway and.

Yeah. Maybe we should design couches that have the remote control in the side arm..

Yeah so we the project is now couches and remote controls.

But even just a thing to attach it to the w you know if you had a thing, a pretty object attached to the wall. But that would really make it more expensive.

Yeah.

But it's only a plastic thing, r really, the thing on the wall.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Do you think it needs to be bigger to not lose, or does that not factor in?

And the other thing is.

Bigger.

Not well it needs to be sort of.

Like Hand hand held size, yeah.

Hand-sized.

Yeah. I don't think you need a.

Not not huge, but.

But definitely not well I don't know.

It can't be that hard to put some kind of a noise on it.

No, it can't be, uh-uh.

No it really wouldn't be.

Huh.

Or like or like a light thing. You know. I dunno.

Like spaceship.

. Yeah. Or make it mobile so it runs around and comes come find you yeah.

That would be really I'm sure we could do that for twenty five Euros a pop.

Little homing device. Um.

Yeah. Uh.

Okay. So what do we think this remote control should Five minutes.

Oh dear.

Till the meeting oh right. This is what we have left. Um, oh we just.

I also think though that it shouldn't have too many buttons,

Yeah, I agree.

'cause I hate that when they have too many buttons and.

Yeah.

B_ button and the F_ button, they don't do anything.

Yeah, yeah yeah.

I mean I know it has to have enough functions but like, I don't know you, just have like eight thousand buttons and you're like, no, you never use half of them. So.

You what if um may be a little fancy but what if it had like a little screen, so it has less buttons but it still has all the functions. Like the way a mobile phone does.

That would be cool.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean it just seems like.

So you could like um like if you have I dunno if you have satellite if you have a hundred channels, you can the way you do it on your radio is that you uh.

yeah.

what do you call it.

Select. Uh.

s y yeah but you can programme, so you can programme like your favourite channels, so like if you had a s

But, would you have the screen on the thing, or would you have it on the telly transmitting the screen.

That's something we could decide. Mm.

Because.

I guess they would go together somehow? I dunno.

Because, I don't know if it's I think it's e expensive, if you have if you use the telly screen,'cause the telly's already a screen, then you can pro sort of have a programming function, really easy sort of arrow up and down, on the remote,

Yeah. Yeah.

and then use the telly as a screen.

Right.

But um.

I'm thinking kind of.

But yeah for sure. Something like not it's not on the button but it's telling you what to do,

Yeah.

is that what you mean?

Yeah.

Right. Mm.

Or like you h you see those you know people I'm thinking of like celebrity cribs kind of things when like they have all those these things that at their house you know their their entire house is so electronic, and they have like this one master control that and it's like a hand held like turns on everything sort of control and it has like a screen and like so I think it should be possible to have some kind of a screen, I don't know if it must be it would probably.

Yeah.

must be ex too expensive though t like I dunno.

Mm.

But like mobile phones have screens and they're cheap.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah that's true.

Yeah. I mean, we have to remember our budget is twelve point twelve fifty for to actually make the device.

Yeah.

Mm.

Um but it's something to think about, yeah.

Well, I guess we have to get to that later, yeah.

I mean we'll have to see how much that would be.

Or some it i we can find out probably on the internet how much it's.

Yeah.

Um. Yeah, and the other thing you said that thing about robust and water um.

What was the word?

Furry.

Water resistant.

Oh I was just.

No but it's I thought, ah, spot on.

Good feel, tact tactile, good tactile feel,

Yeah.

maybe something didn doesn't make your hands sweat lot.

Yeah. Mm, mm.

That's quite annoying.

Maybe um just like a simple thing to have a clip on it, like so you can clip it to your.

Yeah.

like that's another.

Yeah, clip. Ooh. Um.

Um. We should probably start wrapping up, um we've got some initial ideas that we can all look into. Um, and come up with some new ones for the next meeting, which will be in another thirty minutes. Um. So. Yeah. The Industrial Designer, what does that stand for, I_D_,

Yeah I think so.

yeah um is going to be looking more into the working design. So I guess you'd be looking at lots of the things we discussed about screen and um that sort of thing. The something, what is the U_I_?

User.

Yeah, what does it stand for again?

That's me. Uh, User Interface design.

User Interface Designer. So that's gonna be more technical. I guess that maybe the working design has also to do with like the physical feat like just the way it looks and the way it w

So technical function.

The working design is the structure.

Yeah, yeah.

What is technical functions exactl I I don't really know what.

Um, I guess you'd have to find out.

Um.

It says on that email but it.

It was in the email.

It does but it I just don't really.

I wrote down what mine were.

It said um.

Yeah.

It said.

What effect should the thing ha should it have, okay. Alright.

Yeah

And working design.

like.

Okay.

Be a medium between you and the telly I think,

Yeah, yeah. Alright.

Mm.

that's uh.

And how it works, okay. Right. I'm I'm on task.

And the M_E_, what does that stand for? M

Marketing.

Marketing, right. Um.

Marketing. Oh it's written here, but um.

So we'll be working on the user requirements, um Yeah.

Okay.

So I guess that wraps it up. I'll see you all in thirty minutes. I just did.

Question: What were the main decisions and outcomes of the meeting?

Response:
The main decisions and outcomes of the meeting are:
* To design a remote control that is original, trendy, and user-friendly.
* To consider functional aspects and conceptual and detailed design.
* To aim for a selling price of 25 Euros and a profit aim of 50 million Euros.
* To explore the possibility of integrating a screen into the remote control.
* To consider adding features such as a clip, a call button, or a vibrating function to make the remote control more user-friendly.

Question: Besides the features discussed, were there any other specific design considerations mentioned in the meeting?

Response:
Yes, there were a few other specific design considerations mentioned in the meeting:

* The remote control should be water resistant, strong, and have a good tactile feel.
* It should not have too many buttons, and the buttons it does have should be easy to find and use.
* The remote control should be easy to find, so features like a call button, a vibrating function, or a magnet on the back were suggested.
* The remote control should be able to be clipped onto something, like a belt loop or a chair, so that it is not easily lost.

Question: What did the Industrial Designer say about the working design?

Response: The Industrial Designer defined the working design as the structure of the remote control. They mentioned that it should encompass both the physical features and the technical functions of the device.

Question: What did they discuss about the technical functions of the remote control?

Response: Unfortunately, there was no discussion about the technical functions of the remote control in the meeting.

Question: Were there any additional or different aspects of the user experience or interface that were discussed in the meeting?

Response: There was a brief discussion about the potential user interface of the remote control, specifically the possibility of integrating a screen into the device. The Industrial Designer mentioned that the working design should take into account both the physical features and the technical functions of the remote control. However, there was no in-depth discussion about specific aspects of the user experience or interface beyond these points.

Question: What was the opinion of Abigail Claflin regarding the design of the remote control?

Response: Abigail Claflin did not express a specific opinion regarding the design of the remote control in the meeting. The discussion was primarily focused on brainstorming ideas and gathering input from the team members.

Question: Besides the screen integration, were there any other specific technological features discussed for the remote control?

Response: There was no mention of other specific technological features discussed for the remote control beyond the integration of a screen.

Question: It was mentioned that the team should consider the user requirements. What exactly does that mean?

Response: Considering user requirements means understanding the needs and desires of the users of the remote control. This includes understanding how they interact with remote controls, what features are important to them, and what pain points they experience with existing remote controls.

Question: Besides the integration of a screen, were there any other specific technological features discussed for the remote control?

Response: There was no mention of other specific technological features discussed for the remote control beyond the integration of a screen.

Question: What was the opinion of Krista regarding the design of the remote control?

Response: Krista, the industrial designer, did not suggest anything regarding the design of the remote control.