Mainly people respond according to the voice. The
personality and gender of the automated voices you hear when calling your
credit card company or receiving directions from your GPS navigational system
may have an unconscious effect on your perception of the technology.
Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1178168
Human
factors/ergonomics researchers have studied how the gender and tone selected
for an interactive voice response system, or IVR, affects its user-friendliness
and will present their findings at the upcoming HFES 56th Annual Meeting in
Boston.
IVRs have become increasingly popular, particularly with
the introduction of mobile technology such as Apple Siri and Iris for Android.
Past studies have indicated that users are more responsive to actual human
voices than to computer-generated voices, but little research has been completed
on the role that voice characteristics play in user perceptions of the
technology.
In their upcoming Annual Meeting presentation, "He
Says, She Says: Does Voice Affect Usability?" Rochelle Edwards and Philip
Kortum conducted a study in which participants interacted with a medical IVR
that collected information about their health. Users responded to both male and
female voices that spoke in different tones -- upbeat, professional, or
sympathetic -- and then were asked to judge the system's usability.
"We have been systematically looking at what affects
user performance on IVRs for some time now," said Kortum. "Voice is
the major element in an IVR interface, as graphical elements are for a Web
page, and this study was a first attempt to understand the impact voice might
have on the perceived usability of such systems."
The authors found that although IVRs with male voices
tended to be perceived as more usable than those with female voices, they were
not considered more trustworthy. The researchers encourage designers to take
voice characteristics into consideration when developing future systems.
"Anyone who uses an IVR knows how frustrating they
can be," continues Kortum. "Much of this frustration stems from
poorly designed IVRs, not from the form of interface being intrinsically 'bad.'
This research shows that some simple modifications to the design of these
systems can have an impact on the usability of voice interfaces."
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