Speech Recognition as an Input Technique

The article I read is called Speech Recognition as a Computer Graphics Input Technique by Richard Rabin.  The article is about using speech commands to speed up input.  The article touches on a lot of advantages to speech vs keyboard input.  By using speech you will reduce the time it takes to train someone knew to the technology because they can learn just a few keywords to say rather than learning multiple steps.  It also helps because it will increase workers speed.  By saying commands rather than typing them it will not take as long to input them, especially with longer and more complex commands.  Speech input technology has been demonstrated and proven that it can work but as the technology improves it will be more accurate as well as have a larger more diverse vocabulary that can be understood.  Most speech input devices rely on keywords that prompt the computer to do something but in the near future they will use more continuous speech which will allow for a broader range of tasks to be completed.  Testing has shown that operators are initially skeptical about talking to computers but after a short adjustment period they have no problems with it and find it very productive.

Here is a link to the article: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/810000/801278/p179-rabin.pdf?key1=801278&key2=0110255821&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=103251167&CFTOKEN=61037135

My TV

My TV is designed pretty well on first glance.  However there are a couple things that make it very frustrating to use.  First is that there is only one component input.  We have a cable box and have it hooked up to the component input so that we can get high definition channels.  We would also like to have out XBox hooked up to be able to play in HD.  This is not possible however because in order to do that we would have to unplug the cable and plug in the XBox.
Which leads me to my next point of poor design.  All the input plugs are in the back of the TV facing down.  This       means that in order to plug in anything you need to get below the TV so that you can see where you are plugging in your cables.  And since the input is in the back of the TV it is a very hard angle to get.  The overall design of the TV isn't horrible but the input is which makes the TV very frustrating to use.

My remote control

        The remote to my tv is a pretty basic remote.  It can change the channel, the volume, the settings, and the input of the tv.  The thing that makes the design to this bad is the location of the buttons.  There are three buttons that control the volume, up down and mute.  This specific remote has the mute button on the top of the remote and the volume controls in the middle of the remote.  Wouldn't it make sense to put all the volume controls in the same area.  The remote does the same with the channel changing.  The "last" button is next to the mute button but the up and down controls are next to the volume controls in the middle of the remote.
         Another problem is the number buttons.  The buttons are not normal square buttons, instead they are the shape of the number.  This makes it more difficult because the 1 button is very skinny and the 8 button is much bigger.  All the buttons should be the same size to make it easier to use.
         One good aspect of the remote is that there is a little red light that goes on whenever any button is pushed. This is very good feedback, combining this with the physical feedback of pressing in a button makes it easy to tell when i have pressed a button.