Factors Affecting Seniors’ Perceptions of Voice User Interfaces

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2017-12

Type of Work

Department

University of Baltimore: School of Information Arts and Technologies

Program

University of Baltimore: Master of Science in Interaction Design and Information Architecture

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by the University of Baltimore for non-commercial research and educational purposes.

Abstract

This paper explores how seniors perceive Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) and the factors that shape those perceptions. An experiment was administered to 15 seniors (over age of 65), in which the participants searched for information using a traditional keyboard/mouse interface and an experimental voice/touch interface. Throughout the experiment, the participants were observed and interviewed by an investigator. An analysis of the data collected showed that seniors perceive meaningful differences between the two interfaces in terms of learnability, usability, ease of understanding and helpfulness. The data also shows that seniors’ perceptions of the interfaces were most strongly influenced by familiarity, usability, habit, aversion to typing, and efficiency of voice input. These findings have implications for improving the design of VUIs for seniors and accommodating universal accessibility.