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        As we all learn to navigate the new normal in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, one area that has seen repeated debates in the last few weeks is education. Should schools hold in-person learning? What is the safest way to move forward? Can virtual learning be effective? There are probably as many solutions to this hurdle as there are schools, with some families even calling distracting kids with iPads education. There does not seem to be a right way to go about reopening schools or if they should be open at all now that the fall has rolled around. Rather than add to that debate, we will discuss XR (eXtended Realities) as an alternative to in-person learning.

      With many companies continuing to opt for remote working environments, some still search for ways to make their once in-person, now remote meetings feel a bit more interactive. As we have explored before, Social XR can help users feel more connected in our recreational and professional lives. These applications can help you feel immersed, allow you to reach a wider audience and help you stay focused. Ideally, they combat meeting and screen fatigue, lifting spirits, and most importantly, they go beyond what is physically possible by enhancing/augmenting reality.

      As Key Lime Interactive (KLI) celebrated their 11th birthday as a company earlier this year, they were thrilled to receive the news from Expertise.com announcing them as one of the top 10 UX Designers in the Miami, FL area!

        While many feel as though voice technology is a newer innovation. However- the study, development, and implementation of voice and speech recognition technologies has been going on for the last 70 years. This article attempts to provide an overview of the history of voice technology, and how it has developed since its creation. In 1952, the first speech recognition system designed by Bell Laboratories was known as the “Audrey” system and could only recognize single voice digits spoken aloud (source). “The machine understood digits 0-9 is speakers paused in between, though it would have to adapt to each user before it could capture their speech with reasonable accuracy” (source). 

      In recent years, automated speech recognition (ASR) systems have become an integral part of many applications; creating a world of virtual assistants (VAs) who live in our mobile devices, smart home applications, and vehicle-systems. What makes ASR systems special is its ability to quickly and accurately convert spoken language to text. For speech recognition to work requires sophisticated machine-learning algorithms capable of converting all of the nuances and complexities of spoken language into actionable commands in real-time. This is possible thanks to deep learning algorithms ability to digest large datasets and create new strategies for improved accuracy.  

     When the global coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, conference organizers had to respond quickly and decide whether to cancel their conferences outright or move them online. With a tremendous amount of effort in a very short period of time, numerous conferences were relaunched as virtual conferences; recorded or live-streamed speakers broadcast in a multitude of ways, with varying degrees of interactivity. It looks like it may be a long time before it is safe to host or attend large in-person conferences. So based on our experience attending virtual conferences in the past few months, we wanted to explore what makes a great virtual conference.

        We’re in the middle of a seismic shift in the way teams work together, the way that research is conducted, and more. With more and more companies moving to fully remote, distributed teams, questions often arise about how workshops will be impacted. We believe remote workshops can be just as productive as in-person workshops, and here are some of our tips.

      COVID-19 has already drastically changed the way Americans go about our daily lives. Some people are out of a job, others are living paycheck to paycheck, and others are more fortunate to be able to work from home without as much disruption to their socioeconomic wellbeing. In what is essentially the world’s largest work-from-home experiment, COVID-19 will undoubtedly affect the way we conduct user research. As companies around the country try to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, we at Key Lime Interactive are preparing our researchers to continue providing quality research, while taking into account how the stress and anxiety around COVID-19 can cause bias in the process. 

         Voice AI has seen incredible growth over the last few years and has become a part of our everyday lives. Voice Technology not only takes into account how people search for information with their voice through smart voice assistants, or the ability to execute tasks through voice commands, it also takes into account how to aid a person with accessibility needs in his or her daily life in order to ensure equal access to the same experiences as people without accessibility needs.

     Today more than ever, mental health is taking the front position in the conversation about well-being within companies. In a recent poll conducted by KFF, nearly half (45%) of adults in the United States reported that their mental health has been negatively affected by COVID-19. Some of the main causes of stress mentioned were the health and the economic impact of the virus. However, some alarming data regarding mental health in the workplace emerged also before COVID-19, indicating that this is not a new issue.