SCHEDULE

Week 1 (September 2)

Topics:

• Introductions, syllabus
• “Conventional” uses of voice technology
• Introduction to text-to-speech

Assignment: Homework 1, due September 9

• Creative Assignment: Create something that takes non-speech input from a person and responds with speech synthesis.
• Media Assignments:
  1. Listen to the Helpful Mom Voices podcast episode from Reasonably Sound.
  2. Read The Difference followed by the author’s notes.
• Join the class Discord (link will be sent out via email) and discuss the media assignments there.
• Share your blog link with Nicole.

Extra Links:

• Nicole’s Git and Github tutorial
• Nicole’s Dev Setup
• Intro to ES6
• In-class code examples
• SpeechSynthesis documentation

Week 2 (September 9)

Topics:

• Being understood by computers
• Introduction to speech-to-text

Assignment: Homework 2, due September 16

• Creative Assignment: Create something that takes voice input from a person and responds without text.
• Media Assignment: Listen to the Raising Devendra episode from the Invisibilia podcast and discuss it in the #media-discussions channel in Discord.

Extra Links:

• Giphy API
• SpeechRecognition API
• Fetch API

Week 3 (September 16)

Topics:

• Conversation design
• Intro to Dialogflow

Assignment: Homework 3, due September 23

• Creative Assignment: Create something weird with Dialogflow and fill out the voice bot design worksheet for it (linked below).
• Media Assignments:
  1. Play Everest Pipkin’s Shell Song and discuss it in the #media-discussions channel in Discord.
  2. Read “The Ethics of a Deepfake Anthony Bourdain Voice” and discuss it in the #media-discussions channel in Discord.

Extra Links:

• Voice Bot Design worksheet
• Dialogflow docs - for this week, focus on understanding Intents, Entities and Contexts.

Week 4 (September 23)

Topics

• Dialogflow fulfillment, SSML, Firebase

Assignment: Homework 4, due September 30

• Creative Assignment: Create something with Dialogflow, including fulfillment and logic.
• Media Assignment: - Listen to episode 1 (Hope is a Mistake, 17:59) and episode 2 (The User Experience, 21:51) of the Sandra podcast and discuss it in the #media-discussions channel in Discord.

Extra Links

• How to install Firebase CLI
• Dialogflow Webhook Boilerplate Node.js
• Actions on Google Node.js client library intro

Week 5 (September 30)

Topics:

• Advanced Dialogflow: Dialogflow in the browser

Assignment:

• Creative Assignment: Start working on your final project (prompt below), which is due October 14. Next week, come ready to describe what you’ll be working on.
• Media Assignment:
  1. Read Voice Interaction and Player Identity Dissonance in Games by Marcus Carter.
  2. Play any of these voice controlled games and share your experience in the #media-discussions channel in Discord.

Extra Links

• Dialogflow API setup
• Dialogflow API Node.js client
• Socket.IO introduction

Week 6 (October 7)

Topics:

• Voice technology in videogames
• Advanced topics: importing entities, storing data

Assignment:

• Creative Assignment: The final project! See below.
• Media Assignment: Watch Her and talk about it in the #media-discussions channel in Discord.

Extra Links

• Corpora
• Lodash
• Dialogflow: save data in conversation
• Previous students’ final projects

FINAL PROJECT: Due October 14

Using human voice, synthesized speech, or both, create something that subverts the conventional uses of voice technology. You can create a new project or meaningfully expand on one of your previous homeworks. Be ready to explain why what you made is interesting to you, and what theme and idea you’re exploring with your work. A blog post with video documentation of the interaction is required, due by Sunday, October 17, 12pm.

Week 7 (October 14)

Topics:

• Final project presentations

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