New paradigms. Speech recognition technology is rather sophisticated but the interaction patterns around their use are still rather primitive and unnatural. An approach that is yet to be considered is accounting for the social setting - when people other than the user are present and the user is engaged in multitasking. CoxCoach is a voice user interface training system designed to help novice coxswains learn in context. A coxswain's responsibilities are numerous - steering, coach, motivating and directing - and trying to learn on the fly with little help from the coach is trying. Their eyes and hands are already engaged thus making voice a natural and obvious choice for interaction.

In this project, immersion in the target context and audience allowed us to observe and identify their functional, social, emotional and aesthetic needs. Speed dating, a rapid prototyping technique, was employed to let users play with the designed system; this technique allowed us to draw out the most natural interaction behaviors.