Dragon keeps improving its out-of-the-box accuracy with each release. Now 15 releases in, you can see a marked improvement over time. For the first 12 releases, Dragon required you to read a text in order for it to match your results and build a basic voice profile. After this initial training exercise, it still required a great deal of correcting and customisation just to get to a good level of usage.
Nowadays, the latest releases have come such a long way in terms of accuracy and speed of talk-to-type that you can start getting great results after an audio levels check. This doesn’t, however, make it a plug-and-play solution – a common misconception around speech recognition software. Most users will install an app and expect it to start working immediately and without fault.
Dragon’s different in that it’s primary input is the human voice. Since sound environments, jobs and voices differ and it requires its user to essentially “learn to type” overnight, it requires some transitioning and change management. The software comes with hundreds of commands, employing natural language commands, which means you can have 5 different ways to move the cursor to the end of a line by voice. It sounds tricky and can be if you’re trying to maximise your use of the software on your own.
HCD’s coaching and training support enables you to get there at your own pace. Some people buy the product off the shelf and manage to get through the initial steps to a point of using Dragon on a daily basis. We often come into contact with people who have been using Dragon for years. Often using its most basic functions with a combination of self-taught fixes, it’s usable enough to be valuable. When we encounter these kinds of situations we often blow people’s minds with what’s actually possible with the software.
It’s not just a transcription tool. It’s also a dictation and workflow management system that enhances productivity in a variety of ways. You can make it portable to dictate on-the-go or get your support staff to assume much of the time-absorbing that’s associated with document generation.
The bottom line is that having someone who knows exactly how to tweak the software, customise your profile, apply the best usage principles and set you in motion to get the most out of your purchase is not just recommended, it’s essential. A cellphone is just a phone but wouldn’t you want to get the full use out of its amazing capabilities as a calendar, calculator, camera, web browser, media device with a host of applications? In the same way, Dragon needs to be unleashed and you need a dragon slayer from HCD to help you along the way.