Congratulations to our CTO Scott Brave, and Baynote Advisor Clifford Nass, whose book Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship won the International Communication Association’s Outstanding Book Award last week. Scott and Cliff go way back to Scott’s pre-Baynote days as a doctoral student at Stanford where Cliff was his advisor and a professor in the Communication Department as well as the Director of Stanford’s Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab.

The book itself is an interesting look into voice technology and how people react to and interact with this type of interface. I may not be as eloquent as Cliff and Scott in describing the book but rest assured that they address some pretty interesting topics like how people respond to a male versus female voice in e-commerce, if “happy-sounding” car voices encourage safer driving and when it may or may not be preferable to use synthetic-sounding versus human-sounding voices.

Scott is also putting a lot of the sociological and psychological research used in this book into Baynote’s products which really goes to show you just how passionate (borderline obsessive?) our staff is about community and computer interaction on the web.

This is an interesting read and practical for designers and marketers looking to improve their interfaces and we’re glad that the ICA has honored it with such a prestigious award. Congratulations Scott and Cliff!

Buy Wired for Speech now at Amazon.