Abstract: A method for generating voice interface for appliances which may be performed by a manufacturer of the appliance. The manufacturer selects a programmable device for controlling the appliance, the programmable device having resources of less than 9 kilobytes of random access memory and capable of less than 41 million instructions per second. The manufacturer is further provided with an application development kit for building an application for the voice interface including a speech recognition module. The manufacturer programs the programmable device with the application. Preferably, while programming and running the application, the application includes multiple stages and for each stage a different set of open words are recognizable by the speech recognition module. Preferably, the open words are recognized by the speech recognition module, solely in response to a previously stored question posed to a user of the appliance.