Designing Speech and Multimodal Applications for

SeniorsDeborah Dahl

Conversational Technologies

SpeechTEK 2009New York

August 24-27

Goals of this Session

• Discuss general considerations about older users and how they impact design

• Talk about hands-on experience with specific applications

Why Design for Seniors?

• The social reasons:– Make it possible for seniors to fully benefit from technology– Use technology to assist seniors in their daily lives– Use technology to reduce social isolation

• The business reasons:– Take advantage of a big and growing market– Reduce health care costs

• technology-based rehab • aging in place

– Improve containment in call centers

Kinds of Senior Applications

• Call center applications that are used primarily by older customers

• Call center applications that need to be used by a demographic that includes older users

• Assistive technologies that help older users in everyday life

• Rehab applications that help senior users improve functions that have been compromised by aging or a disease

Why do Voice Applications for Seniors Need Special Design Considerations?

• Changes due to aging are familiar to everyone• Some of these changes can impact the use of

speech applications• Aging causes many kinds of changes in all areas of

life– Physical, cognitive, social, psychological…

• Physical and cognitive changes may be most relevant to speech and multimodal applications

Physical Changes

• Perceptual – vision (presbyopia, macular degeneration, cataracts), hearing loss

• Motor– manual dexterity, physical mobility• Effects of chronic diseases

– Diseases that affect breathing can change speech– Parkinson’s disease

• Speaking ability

Cognitive

Cognitive changes tend to not be as dramatic as physical changes

• Working memory capacity can become smaller• Attention – difficulty in focusing, distractibility increase• Learning – may take longer• Processing speed – processing new information may be

slower• Language comprehension– may be slower because of

general slowdown in processing new information• Language production – may slow due to slower word

retrieval

Some Specific Considerations

Speech-only Applications

• User has to be able to hear and comprehend prompts– Speech volume, rate, vocabulary, syntactic and semantic

complexity of prompts can affect comprehension and memory for choices

• User has to be able to respond within the timeout period – Speaking ability doesn’t necessarily degrade with age, but

people may speak more slowly– Length of speech timeout may need to be adjusted– DTMF responses may be slowed by limited dexterity or ability to

see the keypad– Recognizer may need to be trained on older voices

Multimodal Applications

GUI and speech modalities can complement each other

• Text display of prompt can assist users who are hard of hearing and it can also provide a memory aid by persisting

• Spoken prompts can be useful for users who can’t see well

• Touch screen can assist users who can’t use a mouse

• Speech input can be used when using a keyboard is too difficult

Summary

To accommodate senior users, designers must• accommodate range of users

– both old and young– older people at various ages have different needs– for rehab applications, specific disabilities

• take into account the physical and cognitive changes related to aging as they apply to speech and multimodal applications

Discussion

Some Resources

• Web Accessibility Initiative on Aging (WAI-AGE) http://www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/

• Phil Shinn “The Impact of IVR Voice Talent Selection on Intelligibility”, SpeechTEK 2009

• Michael Greene, “Enhancing Accessibility and Personalization Through Senior Friendly Design”, Voice Search 2009