Despite high expectations, there have been few convincing demonstrations of speech input in desktop computing environments. We have focused on window systems, where speech might provide an auxiliary channel to support window navigation.Xspeak, our speech interface to the X Window System, associates words with each window. Speaking a window's name moves it to the front of the screen and moves the cursor into it. Speech does not provide a keyboard substitute, but it does assume some of the functions currently assigned to the mouse. Thus, a user can manage a number of windows without removing his or her hands from the keyboard.We provided this interface to a group of student programmers who used it for several months. This pilot study was designed to identify some initial considerations for using speech recognition in workstations