The Elements of Voice First Style

Chapter 2. When Voice First

Clearly, then, voice is no poor sibling of the other user interfaces: it stands on its own merits and has an important role to play in mediating interactions with our world, whether with other humans or with an artificial intelligence. But like all other interfaces, it is appropriate in certain contexts and it is not in others.

The four dimensions that need to be considered when assessing the suitability of a conversational voice first interface are environment, content, user state, and channels.

Environment

The first component of any context is the environment surrounding the interaction. Two types of environment are important for our purposes: physical and social:

Physical

Characteristics of the physical environment that would be relevant to determining if voice is a good way to interact with the user is level of noise: if it’s too noisy, don’t use voice (because the user won’t be able to hear the system and vice versa).

Social

On the social dimension, if the user is in the company of other people, voice might not be the best way to interact (others may overhear the voicebot or the user; others may be bothered by the noise, etc.).

Content

Here, the concern is with three things: what, how much, and persistence. Following are descriptions of these content aspects:

What is being communicated?

• Sensitivity: If, for example, the information that needs to be communicated by the voicebot to the user is sensitive (date of birth, test results, bank ...