Author of the system here. I do agree that speech-based interfaces can be very cumbersome. Part of this is that current systems aren't perfect yet but part of

Author of the system here. I do agree that speech-based interfaces can be very cumbersome. Part of this is that current systems aren't perfect yet but part of it is also that speaking aloud is just plain strenuous for people. At least the second thing isn't going to go away. Some of the things you touched on are certainly valid points, but spoken language systems also have big advantages. For example, having to spend effort for fully form a thought (to articulate it coherently), forces users to spend a second think about what they actually want. Also, and this was a part of this research, the spoken voice carries quite cool side-channel information that can be exploited in aiding recommendation. In any case, please note that the current UI (which, btw, did show the gathered preferences to some extend by coloring / bolding the shown specs proportionally to the level of satisfaction of your determined preferences / the level of influence) is just a research UI. It does not implement the best I could do, but rather implements an interface that I allowed good interpretability of the results of the conducted study (which, for example, excluded any multi-modal efforts which would have potentially made drawing conclusions harder).