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What is Tuning?

Reference Number: AA-01109 Views: 15632 0 Rating/ Voters

Tuning is the process by which speech recognition application developers evaluate the success of their applications and make changes. It is an iterative process, meaning that after one round of changes is made to an application, the results are reviewed and more changes are made.

Industry best practices usually recommend that approximately 40% of the overall time spent building a speech application should be spent tuning it. What separates tuning from the normal process of testing an application is that tuning should rely heavily on actual production data.

Unlike traditional application development, speech applications are hard to test in a development environment. Many real-world variables affect application performance, such as: unexpected input from users, accented callers, difficult line conditions, and noisy backgrounds.

Simulating all of these conditions is very difficult, which is why the speech recognition industry relies on tuning. The tuning process starts by putting a speech application live (often you will start with a small subset of users who act as real-world beta testers).

By listening to calls, transcribing them, and then running tests, you can see the accuracy of the application and quickly pinpoint any problems in your application.

Tuning often means adjusting grammars to include new utterances, or rewriting prompts to be more clear, or redesigning an application's logic to help better guide callers through the flow of the call.

If you are brand new to Tuning, we recommend you look at some of the following resources available elsewhere on the LumenVox Web site:

You should also read our Getting Started page for information about how to start using the Tuner quickly.