The NESPOLE! Multimodal Interface for Cross-lingual Communication - Experience and Lessons Learned

In this paper we describe the design, evolution, and development of the user interface components of the NESPOLE! speech-to-speech translation system. The NESPOLE! system was designed for users with medium-to-low levels of computer literacy and web expertise. The user interface was designed to effectively combine web browsing, real-time sharing of graphical information and multi-modal annotations using a shared whiteboard, and real-time multilingual speech communication, all within an e-commerce scenario. Data collected in sessions with naïve users in several stages in the process of system development formed the basis for improving the effectiveness and usability of the system. We describe this development process, the resulting interface components and the lessons learned.