After barge-in, keep the playback position

What it is

Barge-in is not “void this message.” An airport kiosk is reading the steps after a gate change; the traveller cuts in to ask which terminal. After that answer, playback should return to the unread steps — not restart at “welcome,” and not drop the tail. The playback position is a bookmark on the output: which sentence was reached, which agenda items remain. Barge-in takes the floor; the bookmark remembers where the tape stopped.

Why it happens

People have usually heard a prefix, and the interruption is aimed at that prefix — a clarification, a follow-up, a skip. If the system discards the TTS cursor, the unheard tail vanishes and the heard prefix is repeated; both ends waste. The cursor is an index into the spoken document. Operations on it are continue, skip, resume from the stop. This is the output analogue of saving in-progress form state: what is saved is not a slot, it is the undelivered stretch of talk. If a nested question finishes and the remaining agenda is silently dropped, listeners infer that the rest of the gate-change no longer mattered.

Studying it

Interrupt mid-prompt, allow a short side question, then compare three system policies: resume from the bookmark, restart from the top, drop the remainder. Dependent measures: whether tail items are still delivered, irritation at repetition, task completion. Independent variable: how deep into the prompt the interrupt landed.

Do not make intent classification of the interjection the independent variable. Whether they asked a clarification or a new request, the question is what happens to the cursor. Use scripts with a remaining agenda (three steps after a gate change), not a one-line confirm.

Where it stops holding

If the interruption was “stop / cancel,” there is nothing to resume. If the content is stale (that train has left), resuming is wrong. A one-sentence confirm has no position worth marking. If the side question changes the task (“go to arrivals”), the old cursor is invalid; swap in a new agenda rather than grafting the old tail back. Resuming without a “picking up from just now” makes the tail sound like a new bulletin.

Applying it

• Keep an explicit output cursor on any prompt longer than one sentence: a sentence index or a remaining-agenda list.
• After a nested answer, resume the leftover items automatically and say that you are resuming; also allow skip.
• Cancel-class interrupts clear the cursor. Do not pretend a tail remains.
• How to check: interrupt at sentence two of five, ask a related question. See whether sentences three to five still arrive. Restart-from-one or never-return means the bookmark is gone.

Related

• Same group: M3.04.1 Users must be able to barge in on playback at any time · M3.04.3 Uninterruptible playback is felt as loss of control
• Nearby: M1.05 Topic switching and task nesting · M3.09 Barge-in and interjection · M1.04 Context retention
• Search terms: resume position after barge-in · playback bookmark · output cursor