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I'm now doing a project on the usability of IVR systems, so I need a touch-tone based IVR system prototype/simulator on my laptop/mobile device.I'm going to ask participants to complete some tasks (such as refilling a phone account) through the prototype, and compare different designs (such as different prompts and number of options).

I'm really new to this industry, I know there's some IVR development tools, like Voxeo and Twilio, but I never used them and don't know if they are appropriate tools for creating such a prototype, after all, I don't need a real IVR system.

So any advice? Thanks in advance.

J.Z.
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I would first look into Asterisk as you can install it and set up simple IVR type menus for free - although you may need some linux experience.

Alternatively you mentioned Voxeo and Twilio - these are both good options even for a prototype since they offer free licenses for small scale prototypes. Whichever option you use though will have some sort of learning curve.

Megan Speir
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Mark
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I recently wrote up 3 tutorials for installing and configuring Asterisk on Ubuntu 13.04.

You might be looking for something like this? I am not sure but you can easily install something like virutal box with a free copy of Ubuntu Server and have this setup and working in an hour or so.

Long as you have some experience with command line in any type of linux system this should be easy.

Setting up the IVR is nothing more then a few lines of code with some extensions and if you need custom sound files for your menus you can easily use something like SoX that is built in ubuntu and convert any sound files you do have to GSM. (File extension that IVR's play easily)

Installing Asterisk (Can't link since I don't have 10 reputation but it is on my site)

A basic Asterisk configuration (Only works locally ex: 192.168.1.0/24 network) http://draalin.com/basic-asterisk-confi ... in-ubuntu/

A advanced Asterisk configuration (Works globally with a Vo-IP provider setup) http://draalin.com/advanced-asterisk-co ... in-ubuntu/

Tyler Bailey
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You mentioned Voxeo which is a great solution for a prototype because you can develop it for free. The advantage of Voxeo over Twilio is that you can download a version of their Prophecy IVR to your laptop for free and work from there using a VoIP phone. Voxeo provides software based VoIP phone with Prophecy. Twilio is cloud based and will require you to host your application somewhere on the web. Prophecy is extremely easy to install and setup, which is not true for Asterisk. While you can get some basic IVR functionality out of Asterisk it was meant to be a phone switch.

The other advantage to using Voxeo's product is that they have excellent customer support that is freely available. Their knowledgeable staff will provide you with quick responses even though you have not purchased anything from them.

They also have graphical development environments for developing your application that are freely available, such as Designer and CXP (formerly VoiceObjects). But Prophecy is based on an open web-based standard called VoiceXML. You can develop simple apps using your favorite web development tools. If you are familiar with ASP.NET MVC there is an open source project that makes it easy to develop VoiceXML applications called VoiceModel.

If you are just looking at the usability of the Voice User Interface (VUI) you do not have to develop an IVR application. You can use a technique that VUI designers use called "Wizard of OZ Testing". In this type of testing you just have a person on the other end of the phone that mimics the IVR by following a written script. You have a video camera on the caller to see how they respond to certain prompts and get an indication on whether they understand or get frustrated with the VUI design. You will also want to have a recording device on the phone for playback and analysis. This is very simple with voice applications that use speech-recognition but is a little more challenging with DTMF. Have you seen the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer plays the Moviephone guy. You will need to get a device that can translate the DTMF tones to the numbers on the keypad for the person simulating the IVR so they know how to respond. I have seen a demonstration where someone used a Voxeo Prophecy IVR to bridge a call and listen in for DTMF and spit the results out to a screen.

Kevin Junghans
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If you can't program yourself your best bet is pry IVRDesigner.com it's for real systems, but you could certainly prototype a IVR on it.

If your actually trying learn the technology behind the systems, then yea go for Asterisk - it requires a pretty technical level of knowledge so be ready.

Using Voxeo, Twilio, Plivo, Tropo or the like should pry be your last option. They basically make it "easier" for web technologies to work with Asterisk. The only exception to this would be if you are familiar with web technologies and not familiar with the telecom industry.

Taylor Hawkes
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