Designing Effective Speech Interfaces

Cultural Propriety

The fourteenth law, Cultural Propriety, states: The interface will match the user's social customs and expectations.

Human Factors

Humans interact with their environment within broad contexts. As a person talks to another person, their conversations are within the context of the room, the building, the organization, the city, and the country they are in. In addition, there are social roles they may be playing; for example the role of boss, worker, expert, parent, or child. Human beings are social animals, and these larger contexts affect their behavior.

Users now expect that their computers will interact with them the way humans do.

Users now expect that their computers will interact with them the way humans do. Initially users did not expect computers to interact like humans. If the computer crunched the numbers correctly, people were happy. Improved technology and more sophisticated interfaces have led users to expect their computers to interact with them and converse with them as though they were people, not computers. Speech applications are at the heart of these expectations. Users may understand they are speaking with a computer and not a person, but that does not mean that they expect any less. They still expect to have a human-like conversation with the computer. This will only increase as speech applications become more sophisticated and more common. This “ups the ante” for interface designers and requires them to understand and know human conversation ...