Nuance transforms the TV experience with voice

Nuance transforms the TV experience with voice

April 2016, NAB – Voice and language which is the most natural modalities we acquired since birth. No wonder that we are searching for communication with devices using our voice and language. Nuance Communications, has developed products that provide speech and imaging applications, is a leader in this area. If a customer uses voice commands to talk to automobile there is 99% chances that it is Nuance technology.

Kenneth Harper, VP, Devices & Ecosystem of Nuance talked to us about last advancements in transforming the TV experience with voice.  Nuance has been working for some time on specific solution called Dragon TV that is going to have huge impact on the TV experience.

The TV room is usually a complex multi-person environment where the commands are mixed with conversations making voice control is a big challenge. While you are watching TV, your kids are playing or your other devices are talking to you.  There are some advancements to solve that problem – said Harper. One of them is called signal enhancement.  Nuance is looking at audio that is being recorded, usually from two different microphones that, depending on set up, use an integrated technology and solution that we use that can sit in the remote control or set top box.  The technology trys to determine who is actually speaking in the living room. When we determine who that speaker is, we put what we called “a beamer” on that speaker. Then as a post processing task from all audio that was recorded, we enhanced that audio and suppress everything else. It called signal enhancement.

Accuracy matter in TV experience and Nuance making it work well.
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TV is not one piece but multiple pieces. Nuance covers the entire spectrum for TV by providing the enabling technology to manufacturers and then integrate it this with specific hardware devices or specific solution. Now when the second screens are considered as TV as well,  a companion app is in use in that case. Sometimes it is at the set up box, sometimes inside the remote control. The customers have their preferences and Nuance follows their needs for both solutions– said Harper.

There is a difference between using TV and training Dragon for PC use to helping write an document or general input to a computer– mentioned Harper referring to our journalism work. TV uses mostly short comments that are fairly predictable. For TV there are certain things people going to do.
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There are usually short commands, 5-6 unique words, we know the vernacular. Those are things that can be optimized – stated Harper. If a customer search for ‘movies with Bill Murray”. That’s how it all comes together.
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The future of the living room is set. TV becomes the central hub of the home and voice is becoming the primary interface.

20 valuable lessons for games designers

20 valuable lessons for games designers

Game Developers Conference, San Francisco – Mark Rosewater, Head Designer for the “Magic: The Gathering” shared his experiences that he gained over the past  20 years on designing, improving, and advancing the same game. Since 1995, he has been working for Wizards of the Coast which created Magic: The Gathering. He mentioned not many games survived that long time and it is no wonder that the game went though many changes. In the period of 20 years they made: 86 randomized booster products, 69 non-randomized products, online licensed and other miscellaneous products, and produced over 14,000 unique cards.

There were also many lessons learned that the game designers can adopt in the process of building their games. Rosewater named 20 lessons. One for each year of his work.

Lesson 1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle.

Knowing your audience is a key. Since your audience are humans,  you know that they can be a little stubborn and have their own habits, so don’t try to change the players to match the game. Change your game to match the players.

Lesson 2: Aesthetics matter. Don’t fight human perception.

Aesthetics is also known as the Philosophy of Art or Science of Beauty. The idea of aesthetics is to study how humans perceive the world. There are differences between individuals, as well as common things that are  aesthetically pleasing. In games, players expect the components of their game to have a certain “feel”. That is not only means visual aesthetics, but also things like balance, symmetry, and pattern completion. If any of these components are missing, it makes players feel ill at ease, distracts them from focusing on the game, and makes them pay attention to what your game isn’t instead of what it is.

Lesson 3: Resonance is important.

The audience already has preexisting emotional responses that the game designer can build upon. For example Magic did not invent zombies. Players come to the game with a pre-built emotional relationship with zombies that were created from years of watching pop culture. As a game designer, that’s a tool you should make use of.

Lesson 4: Make use of piggybacking.

Piggybacking is a use of preexisting knowledge to front-load game information to make learning easier. You don’t have to teach players things they already know, like killing a black cat is a bad luck.

Lesson 5: Don’t confuse “interesting” with “fun”.

There is 2 types of stimulation. There is intellectual stimulation (“interesting”) and emotional stimulation (“fun”). Looking at the cards is intellectual stimulation. Playing with the cards is emotional stimulation. We think about ourselves as intellectual creatures but we tend to make most of our decisions based less on facts and more on emotions. So, your game can speak to your audience on intellectual level or you can speak to them on emotional level. Both are valuable, but when you speak to the player on an emotional level, you are more likely to create player satisfaction.

Lesson 6: Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke.

To be successful with a game you need to know what you want your audience to experience. What emotional response are you trying to create? You must continually ask yourself “What impact will this game choice have on the player experience”? And if it doesn’t contribute to the overall experience then it has to go.

Lesson 7: Allow the player the ability to make the game personal.

It is important for your players to have personal connection with your game. The more the players feel the game is about them, the better they will think of it. How do you do it? Provide a lot of choices, give them different resources, different paths, different expressions. Give the player the ability to choose (and not choose) things, allowing them to feel that what they choose is “theirs”. In Magic: The Gathering, the players can choose: colors, creatures, characters, factions, illustrations and the frames. There are many options available.

Lesson 8: The details are where your player falls in love with your game.

The players want to find a piece of game to call their own. The details matter because the individual will bond with the game through them. What might seem insignificant is anything but that. A small detail might only matter to a tiny percentage but to that percentage it could mean everything.

Lesson 9: Allow your players to have a sense of ownership.

You need to give the players an ability to build things that are uniquely theirs. The players don’t just create a deck of cards, they create THEIR deck: something what personally represents them. So when their deck wins, they win, because the deck is no longer just part of the game. It is an extension of themselves.

Lesson 10: Leave room for your player to explore.

Don’t always show the players the things you want to see. Let your players to find them. Let them discover things. Because if they find them, they will be more invested.

Lesson 11: If everyone likes your game but no one loves it, it will fail.

Players don’t need to love everything in your game, but they need to love something. Something they feel strongly about. Don’t worry that the players will hate something. Worry that no one will love anything, because things that evoke strong responses will most often evoke strong responses in many directions. This means that is almost impossible to make some players love something without making others players hate it. In fact some players enjoy hating what other players love. So stop worrying about evoking a negative response and instead develop something that evokes a strong response.

Lesson 12: Don’t design to prove you can do something.

Creative people tend to have larger egos, because it takes ego to will something into existence. Having an ego is fine but you can’t let your ego drive your motivations. You goal is to deliver an optimal experience for your target audience. Your decisions have to serve your game and not you. So, ask yourself: Is this decision helping me achieve the optimal experience for my target audience or is it being done to fulfill an inwardly facing need for self-satisfaction? If the answer is the latter, you are doing it for the wrong reason.

Lesson 13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win.

It is not the players’ job to find the fun, it is your job as a designer to put the fun where they can’t help but find it. Because when the players sit down to play the game there is an implied promise from the game designer that they will have fun. Remember – you have to make sure that what it takes to succeed at your game is the very thing that makes it fun. Fun can’t be tangential. It has to be the core component of your game experience.

Lesson 14: Don’t be afraid to be blunt.

Artists tend to prefer subtlety. They think show, don’t tell. But sometimes subtlety doesn’t work. People can just miss the obvious. For example in Magic we use the keywords to make sure players can focus on the mechanics.

Lesson 15: Design the components for the audience it’s intended for.

When you aim to please everyone, you often please no one. All your players don’t want the same thing out of your game. It is important to understand what different kinds of things your players want and to understand different kind of players you have.

Lesson 16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them.

When you try something grandiose and it fails the players will forgive you, because they recognize you were trying to do something awesome. They respect the attempt and they even stick around to see what you will do next. But when you bore them, there is no such forgiveness, because making the same mistake is not the same as making a new one. When you bore the players, they resent you. Sometimes they stop playing.

Lesson 17: You don’t have to change much to change everything.

The game designers think there is never enough so they keep sticking more elements in. That creates complexity for your players and muddies the message of your game. You waste resources you could use later. Instead of asking how much I need to add? Ask – How little do I need to add?

Lesson 18: Restrictions breed creativity.

There is a myth about creativity that the more options available, the more creative people can be. But this contradicts what we know about how most brains work. The brain is amazing organ, it is very smart. When asked to solve a problem, most brains check their data banks and ask– Have I solved this problem before? If yes, it solves it the same way. Most of the time this is efficient. It lets you avoid relearning tasks each time you do them but it causes a problem with creative thought. If you use the same neural pathways you get to the same answers and with creativity that is not your goal. Here is the trick Mark shared with the audience. If you want to get your brain to get to new places, start from somewhere you have never started before. It forces you to think different in ways and create new problems to solve which results in new ideas and new solutions. What this means is that restrictions aren’t an obstacle but valuable tool.

Lesson 19: Your audience is good in recognizing problems but bad at solving them.

Your players have a better understanding of how they feel about your game than you do. You create the emotional response but they know what that is. They can easily tell when something is wrong. They are excellent in identifying problems. But they are not equipped to solve those problems. They don’t know your tools, your limitations. Use your audience as a resource, as a parameter to discover what’s wrong but take it with a grain of salt when they offer the solutions.

Lesson 20: All of the lessons connect.

 

The characteristics of Generation Z

The characteristics of Generation Z

February, DEW 2016, Los Angeles – Margaret Czeisler, Chief Strategy Officer from Wildness, was talking about the characteristics of Generation Z. What the content creators and technology innovators need to know about that generation to serve better their needs?

What is unique about generation born after Millennials?

The age of the group is 21 and less. This is a generation that never has cable tv and they definitely had cut the cord or they are planning to do it. Generation Z lives in the times of fully embracing the social media – every minute 500 hours of videos are upload and shared to You Tube; half a million photos are upload to Snapchat.  No wonder that 78% find branded or sponsored social media appealing, 77% find branded or sponsored You Tube videos appealing.

Generation Z is ready to rewrite the rules. They are transgender in the borders of gender, culture and race. It is not that they do not see race, but they are not judging on it – stated Czeisler based on her extensive research on Gez Z – They embrace differences in the way we have never seen in the past. Their approach to the culture is also very different and unique. They don’t consume the culture, they make it, create it. They are culture creators. They are catalysts of the culture revolution that we already experienced.

The opposite of Millennial, who hate failures and hide them, the Generation Z considers failure a natural part of living, an experience of life. Gen Z embraces the failure. (“Failure is a great thing. It teaches you what is good… what to do and what not to do. If you fail at this, then the next thing you know, you’ll find something else you can do better. You’re not going to fail at everything” – said Mira, 14). 91% of respondents said that failure is an important thing in life.

Gen Z is also well known as a generation of the shorten patience span.

 

Who are the Millennials?

Who are the Millennials?

February, DEW 2016, Los Angeles – Digital Entertainment World is the conference that celebrates the visionary content creators and technology innovators who are creating the engaging products and experiences. But the key to successful outcome is to know the target group and its characteristics.  Naseem Sayani, Vice President of Business Strategy from Huge presented to the audience the latest research on the generation of Millennials.

Who are the generation also known as “Generation Y”? How do we understand Millennials today?

There are no precise dates when this generation starts and ends; but most researchers use birth years from early 1980s to 2000. Sayani described them as the fearless generation. There is something the way they were raised that make them feel un-constrained by limitation or rules – she said – actually they set up their own rules and they have a passion around doing that. Often they disregard the instructions and do things their own way.

Sayani stated that Millenials are resilient in their pursuit of figuring out a system. There are no limits blocking their way. There is nothing that they can’t accomplish and nothing that cannot be done. They have grown up in the era of digital, not the transition from analog to digital. DVD was a standard, so they embrace You Tube naturally. They communicate through Snapchat and they are text savvy.

P.S. Let’s bring some other researchers founding of the Millennials characteristics on the top of Sayani presentation. Jean Twenge, the author of 2006 book Generation Me, attributes Millennials with the traits of confidence and tolerance but also identifies that they a sense of entitlement and narcissism. In 2008 Ron Alsop called the Millennials “Trophy Kids” That reflects a trend in competitive sports, where participation alone is frequently enough for a reward. Millennials have great expectations from the workplace so the employers are not necessary happy about them. They change their job frequently, always looking for something that is a better place and better salary. Sociologist Andy Furlong described them as optimistic, engaged, and team players.

 

Gemalto presents real Enigma machine along with the story

Gemalto presents real Enigma machine along with the story

March 2016, RSA, San Francisco – After hours spending on the show floor at RSA conference and the talks about security, vulnerability, encryption and authentication I stopped at the Gemalto booth in the North Hall of Moscone Convention Center to listen the presentation. Scott Meltzer from Gemalto was talking about the history of famous encrypting machine Enigma. The company also presented the real 1946 original Enigma machine (NEMA) at the booth. That was a Swiss, 4-rotor model with a movable reflector, built for the Swiss Army in 1946. 1 of 300 machines that are known to still exist today.

Here is the story that was presented.

The most common information that we hear about the Enigma code is that it was super-secret throughout WWII, and it took one man to invent but over 10,000 men to defeat.

Well, none of it is true.

The Enigma was invented in 1918 by Arthur Scherbius in Germany. The inventor was highly interested to share his “rotating rotors” encryption machine with the military but the WWI was just about to end and army wasn’t interested. So, instead he put his invention for commercial use and started the company. The first prototype called Enigma A came to life in 1923. Enigma D, the first commercial version, was produced in 1927 and sold in multiple countries to encrypt financial information, diplomatic communiques, and military messages. By 1928, both German Army and Navy were using customized and upgraded versions of those machines. In fact, the British government had actually purchased several first generation Enigma machines back in 1926.

So, what is the Enigma machine and how it works.

It’s a huge polyalphabetic substitution cypher. Each message is encrypted with its own unique key. Keys are around 17,000 characters long. There are non-repeating substitutions and no easily discernable pattern. The sender would press a key on the keyboard. This would advance the first rotor one step and send an electric signal from the keyboard, through the plug-board. This would be the first substitution in the cypher. Each rotor then introduced an additional substitution as that signal went through it. Another substitution at the reflector and then back through the rotors in reverse and out through the plug-board, with additional substitutions at each step. And finally the signal was sent to the lamp array to show the encoding of that letter. The genius of this electro-mechanical system was that the encoding was reciprocal. If you typed a “W” on one Enigma, and it came out a “B,” typing that “B” on another Enigma would reproduce the “W,” but only if their initial settings were the same. And because a rotor would move every time a key was pressed, the circuit created by the next key pressed would be completely different than the previous circuit and would generate a completely different substitution.

The Enigma was the most powerful and unbreakable code machine. Until 1932.

Just before Nazis came to power, three Polish mathematicians: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, successfully broke the Enigma. Poles were able to decrypt 75% of the German army’s Enigma-encrypted radio transmissions between 1933 and 1938. But once the war began in 1939, the Nazis upgraded their machines. They distributed 2 additional rotors, and they changed their procedures to plug several security holes that the Poles were exploiting. This didn’t stop the Poles from breaking some of the Nazis’ daily codes, but each success took much longer, and breaking the entire system would have required way more manpower than they had. They also knew from some of their decrypted messages that Hitler had set his sights on Poland and was planning his move within the next 6 weeks. So, five weeks before Nazis invaded, the Poles gave French and British codebreakers all their information, including working models of the Nazi’s military Enigmas they had reverse-engineered, along with the Cyclometers, Bombas and Zygalski decrytping sheets they used to decode them.

And this is when the more familiar story of breaking the Enigma code begins.

The story of The Bletchley Park Team – Dilly Knox, John Jeffreys, Peter Twinn and Alan Turing, along with over 11,000 others started to deliver their Ultra decrypts. “It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war” – said Winston Churchill to King George VI. BBC claimed that this team shortened the war by at least 2 years. The story was recently portrayed in the movie “The Imitation Game” starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley.

Buffet and woodwinds changing with the times

Buffet and woodwinds changing with the times

Buffet, the storied French manufacturer of woodwind musical instruments, including oboes, clarinets, flutes, saxophones and bassoons, refreshed its name and look this year. At the NAMM show, visitors to  their booth had a chance to see a name change as well as a new brand logo for Buffet Crampon USA. This is the first change to their iconic woodwind logo in over 170 years. The company decided to make its new look for the 190th anniversary of Buffet Crampon and 90th anniversary of Julius Keilwerth, the German saxophone manufacturer established in 1925 and now a part of the Buffet Group.

The changes were revealed at first in France at the beginning of this year  where the family Buffet began manufacturing quality clarinets in 1825. The French musical instrument maker expanded its operations under the vision of Jean-Louis Buffet and his wife Zoe Crampon. Buffet Crampon started operating exclusively in France, and over the years augmented the production to facilities in Germany and China.

Now Buffet Crampon is quickly approaching its second century of operation with a new name and logo as well as a new line of products including new clarinet models for 2016.  The product lines now include Tradition professional clarinet and Prodige student clarinet. Tradition establishes a third professional clarinet bore family (alongside the R13 and RC families) and features the first collaboration of European and North American Clarinet Artists in the design of new model. Prodige, on the other hand, sets a new benchmark for student clarinets with an all-new bore design that retains the tone of the Buffet Crampon heritage. Jerome Perrod, global president of Buffet Crampon and Francois Klok, president of Buffet Crampon USA talked with me about the challenges for the music makers in the development of the instruments.

For beginning musicians, the biggest challenge is how to keep the attention to the instrument and continuing playing if the first sound is not satisfactory? The most important thing is to keep the contact with the instrument. The big development for the new  instrument was covering a little so the sound is still pleasing. Now, it sounds good right away. This is a big move as a person learns to play the instrument because he/she feels better about their ability to create good sounds.  This feedback encourages beginners to continue to play more and study harder versus dropping classes and quitting. Klok, who is an oboe and double reed player reminisced that he was seven years old when he started playing oboe. My brothers and sisters hated me for doing that  he stated with smile.

There is another challenge for beginning musicians. Parents are not willing to make a big investment to buy an instrument with the  high risk that their son or daughter is going to drop it very quickly. On other hand, if a school buys the instruments, after a few months and multiple players, the instrument is used to much to be attractive any more. The Buffet Crampon presidents know how important ownership of is. Francois remembered that his first obo was lend to him from conservatory, and then his parents bought him a used instrument. He remembered his happiness and pride of owning his first instrument. He knows (and feels) how it is to say – this is my own oboe. Not my sister’s, not somebody else’s, but mine. It is important to make it affordable to young students.

With the new Prodige student clarinet, Buffet Crampon did a wonderful job in addressing these issues. The instrument sounds acoustically beautiful and would not stop music adepts from dropping playing it yet has an attractive price point for parents and schools.

The bottom line is – to create orchestral music we need to have an orchestra with all the variety of instruments.