Chronology of Voice & User Interface Design Work – Tim Noonan

This voice experience chronology is provided to demonstrate the variety and extent of my voice and technology expertise. I have been designing voice-based technologies since the early 90s. This chronology covers keynote speaking, voice casting, vocal direction & coaching, integration of human voice recordings into technology products as well as several applications of computer-generated text-to-speech for presenting information over the phone and via other technologies.

2014, Launched Tim Noonan Consultant Speaker Coach brand and website.

2013, Commenced officially offering [Voice Readings with Tim to clients in-person, Skype and Phone.

2012, delivered a series of 15 presentations to 1000 Westpac and St.George bank contact centre agents on vocal authenticity and insightful listening.

2012, Conducted Voice Branding audit, IVR script review, voice recommendation and direction for Red Energy’s new IVR.

2011, updated the Australian Telephone Voting Standard to reflect real-world implementation in the 2011 NSW State Election. Download The updated Version of the Australian Telephone Voting Standard in PDF

2010-11, Lead voice designer to the NSW Electoral Commission designing an overseeing all voice aspects of the iVote service. iVote is the most comprehensive fully automated telephone voting system in the world and was subsequently issued with Vision Australia’s Making A Difference Award.

2010-11, Voice Design Consultant to the NSW Ministry of Health to script cast and direct for their Mental Health Line;

2010, Principal author and consultant for Australian Telephone Voting Standard.

2010, Delivered Award-winning presentation to Battle of Big Thinking event on the relationship between Voice and Trust and bringing back into balance the twin communications senses of Hearing and Seeing.

2009, Launched Vocal Branding Australia as a company.

2009, CoffeeCast interview with Robyn Dickinson about voice and Vocal Consciousness.

2008, published Your Voice is Your Business eBook on presentation strategies for Vocal Brilliance;

2008, presentation on Vocal Branding at the Experiential Marketing Summit

2007, presentation at Interesting South on Vocology and Vocal Consciousness

2006-7, accessibility and voice usability designer for the Australian Electoral Commission to develop their kiosk-based voice-output voting machines.

2006-12, Director on the board of radio station 2RPH (Radio for the print handicapped)

2003-present, voice counselling to individuals and professionals

2003-4, consulted as voice designer and accessibility expert to the Smart Internet CRC on Amivox a speech recognition based voice output mobile phone/organizer and communications device.

2002-5, Committee member and contributing author to the Australian standard on telephone based speech recognition user interface design AS 5061-2008.

2001, Researcher and author of the accessible telephone banking standard for the Australian Bankers’ Association.

2001, Developed LibTel, a fully automated TTS-based telephone service for searching an in-house library catalogue of 10,000 braille and audio titles, including the ability to check out books over the phone which were send in the post to the borrower.

2000, Consulted to Westpac Bank on optimising human and TTS voice output for Automatic Teller Machines;

1998, obtained government grant to develop JobPhone, a fully automated telephone service allowing job vacancies to be searched and listened to over the phone. The service scraped job ads from internet job listings (with permission) and rendered them in synthetic speech.

1997, conceptualised, designed and implemented Today’s News Now, a fully automated telephone-based service for reading newspapers over the phone.

1996, Trained key St.George staff in my script writing and vocal direction methodologies. This philosophy contributed to the award the Bank received in 2008 for their contact centre and messages on hold system.

1996, Engaged to Voice Coach and vocally direct Julie Anthony in-studio to voice the new St.George Bank telephone banking script.

1995, invited to present and write paper for telephony conference on Designing User Friendly Voice Systems..

1995, commissioned to write the telephone script and design menus for St.George Bank’s new Portfolio telephone banking service.

1993, consulted to St.George bank to review scripts and recommend customer-centric wordings for ACD and IVR banking services

1992, commenced work on Standards Australia IT/22 Committee, dealing with IVR Voice User Interface design.

1989, Technology R & D manager at Royal Blind Society, developing systems for reformatting textual information in a form suitable for reading by computer.

1985-88, worked as Royal Blind Society’s first assistive technology consultant, recommending voice output computing solutions for people who are blind.

1985-8, studied Cognitive Psychology, auditory processing, linguistics, education and computer science Majoring in Psychology and Education.

1984, work for a year as a telephonist for a building engineering manufacturer/supplier

1983, radio announcing and paneling for 2RPH Radio for the Print Handicapped;

1982-3, part time work doing narrator auditions and recorded text book quality assurance for student text books on tape.