I’ve just spent the last 30 minutes getting started with Dragon Dictate for the Mac. For years, I’ve put off using dictation software, convinced that I didn’t really have much use for it. However, as the imminent onset of RSI looms dark the horizon,  it felt that now was the right time to give a dictation app a try.

So, I’ve spent the morning trying to read very clearly into a Plantronics headset, whilst also getting my head around the various voice commands that help you make the most of package like Dragon Dictate. And, despite a few teething problems, including the odd typo and some fiddly annoyances, I think this could definitely help in a number of areas. Firstly, there is the transcription of interviews. Although Dragon Dictate cannot transcribe these directly, what you can do–though it’s a bit of a hack–is have an interview playing in one ear, whilst you dictate its directly into the application of your choosing. (For anyone that has to do this kind of thing on a regular basis, and doesn’t have a touch type speed of hundred and 20 words a minute, you’ll appreciate just how valuable this can be.)

However, what I just outlined is a pretty unique requirement, so how does Dragon Dictate handle more standard requirements? As I’ve already mentioned, you do need to train Dragon Dictate for a few minutes once you’ve created your profile. And, as you might imagine, the more you train Dragon Dictate to recognise your voice pattern, the better the application is going to perform. Having said this, based on just a few minutes of training Dragon Dictate performs amazingly well.  Naturally, not every word is perfectly recognised, and the list and voice commands that you used to control app will take some getting used to. But these are small gripes.

The main challenge with using a piece of software like Dragon Dictate doesn’t really have anything to do with the application itself, but more to do with how you adapt to the changes you must make in the way you input text. Decades spent bashing away on a keyboard  precondition your brain to a certain way of working, and it’s quite a challenge to make the switch. Verbalising your thoughts, rather than simply channelling them through your keyboard, is actually quite a tiring process. For most writers and journalists, an article is edited on the page. Your first sentence is a rough draft;  you make small edits; you reorder paragraphs in a document. However, when dictating you must form your thoughts with more clarity before committing them to speech.

The words above are my 1st (this should be ‘first’) attempt at dictating an article and it was an interesting exercise. On a number of occasions I have had to revert to my keyboard  to correct certain errors, but most of these have been style issues, such as the one I have outlined above in brackets.

I’d love to hear how other people have got on when using DragonDictate and if there are any errors in this article, well, you can just blame the app!

You can find out more about Dragon Dictate at www.nuance.com.