CivTech Week #4: Speech AI and Ziggy Stardust

After last week’s call for Scottish accents went somewhat viral thanks to George Eckton and his colleagues at Citizens Advice Scotland, we dove back into more user testing this week.

It’s been a game of two halves in assessing how the two AI systems perform.

Initially had some very positive feedback for one of the speech AI systems, with the other system making school boy errors. Since then but the second system is now storming ahead. You might even call it a ‘last-minute equaliser’.

We’ve had regular catch-ups with Citizens Advice Scotland and AI developer teams. This has given us more ideas about the final product but also points to some of the challenges ahead. Some takeaways include:

• The first half of a postcode is called an ‘outcode’ (who knew?!)
• We’re making steady progress with the logic needed to cover the outcode areas that span two local authorities
• Only trialling the system on users with Scottish accents may not be sufficient for accurate user testing. Many callers to Citizens Advice come from diverse backgrounds
• It would be a good idea to get a Scottish voice actor to replace the robot voice on the speech AI system

Elsewhere, Andy and Elizabeth had their marketing hats thanks to a brand narrative workshop with MadeBrave. They came back pondering the question: if SIDE Labs were a person, who would it be? Fancying ourselves as ‘Digital Explorers’ (as in the acronym ‘SIDE’), Ziggy Stardust’s name came up. Other suggestions included Deborah Meaden, Bjork and Greta Thunburg. (I wonder if those three names have ever appeared in a list before. If so, where?)

On the theory that you can’t see yourself very well, but you can see other people better, we put the question back to our loyal readers (both of them!) — who would SIDE Labs be if it was a person?

Please answer below. Best answer wins a prize. Bonus points if you can think of someone who has had Social Impact and is a Digital Explorer.