When a phrasing fails, recovery should offer another way to say it

What it is

A miss is often not that the user does not know what they want. It is that the sentence they are using is one the system cannot take. Recovery wording has to offer another path that can actually be spoken, not ask for the same sentence again. In a lecture hall, the slide-control voice says “I missed ‘next.’ You can say ‘next slide,’ or ‘turn the page.’” Both point at the same act; the acoustics and the syntax differ. Without an alternative, people say the original slower and louder, still on the same dead path.

Why it happens

An intent has a family of formulations. The recogniser is thick on some members of the family and thin on others (a pet phrase, a dialect form, a long politeness wrapper). When the user is stuck on a thin branch, repeating sends the same poorly covered acoustics again. Handing over a short sentence that is already in the vocabulary moves them onto a thick branch: a new waveform and a new syntax.

The alternative has to be speakable, not an abstract description of the capability. “Try saying it more simply” supplies no new sentence; “you can say ‘next slide’” does. Too many alternatives turn the recovery turn into a menu and a lesson. One line, two at most, parallel to what the user just attempted, is wording. How many misses before changing channel or narrowing the question is strategy. This leaf only decides where the new sentence in the mouth comes from.

Studying it

On Wizard-of-Oz or a live recogniser, after a miss, two wordings: acknowledge only, versus acknowledge plus one contrastive short sentence. Dependent measures: whether the next turn uses the offered frame, whether that turn succeeds, whether people ignore the alternative and recast the original. Independent variables: distance from the original (near-synonym short sentence versus a different syntax), number of alternatives (one, two, four).

Corpora can be coded for whether, after a miss, the user changed verb or syntactic skeleton. If they never change, the wording did not supply a movable template. If the lab prints the alternative on a screen, the measure is read-and-say, not whether an auditory prompt can get a new sentence into the mouth without the eyes.

Where it stops holding

When the original was already on a thick branch and the miss came from noise or a proper name, a syntactic alternative does nothing; spelling, confirmation, or a channel change is what should move. If the alternative changes the intent (user said “back to the outline,” system demonstrates “next slide”), the wording is correcting the wrong target. Children or language learners may treat the demonstration as the only legal sentence and refuse natural wording later — mark it as “you can also say,” not “you must say.” Internal command names (“please say COMMAND_NEXT”) are not alternative phrasings.

Applying it

• For every high-miss intent, keep one or two short sentences already in the vocabulary and speak them on a miss. Do not invent them live.
• Align the alternative with the last user act: if they were turning a slide, give a slide-turning line. Do not advertise a different skill in the same breath.
• Give one alternative this turn; hold a second for the next miss. A four-item list belongs in help, not in recovery.
• How to check: align miss turns with the next user utterance and see whether the demonstrated skeleton appears. If people still repeat the original and miss again, check that the alternative is actually inside recognition coverage — otherwise it is a fake alternative.

Related

• Same group: M2.04.1 Say what was not heard, not just “repeat” · M2.04.3 Do not blame the user for the miss
• Nearby: M2.06 Discoverability and help · C7.14 Command grammar and free expression · M1.06 Repair strategies
• Search terms: offering alternative phrasings · speakable paraphrase · recovery prompt