This is an interesting topic. I'm currently working on a Voice UI for a consumer product application.
It seems to me that while voice I/O promises to deliver an enhanced experience, the technology does not and cannot yet live up to its promise. Aside from the social awkwardness of talking to your computer in an office full of people, here's what makes matters even worse:
1. Recognizers usually tend to miss-recognize short words that would feel intuitive to the user, such as "back" and "next" and "stop" What you are left with as the a designer is "Go back, Play next, Stop now" - words that consumers would never think to say, and frankly irritate them.
2. Let's assume though that they do make the effort to learn the keywords, and are alone (or ignore the folks at the office). They open their mouth wide and say "Plaaay Neeeext." only to be faced with their worst fear: "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand that."
Us humans rely heavily on being able to communicate. Our survival as a species depends on it, and our success is a direct result of the ability we have to understand each other. We are hard-wired to be really upset when we cannot make ourselves understood. At the gut-level, miscommunication is a threat.
The application I'm working on gives users the option to interact either via keypad input or voice input. Only about 30% choose voice. It's convenient when they're driving, when they absolutely need to focus their eyes on something else.
But in truth, with the current technology, there seem to be circumstances in which the advantage of using voice to communicate with a machine is greater than its drawbacks.
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