Paper Info
Title
Making it easier for older people to talk to smart homes: the effect of early help prompts
Abstract
It is well known that help prompts shape how users talk to spoken dialogue systems. This study investigated the effect of help prompt placement on older users’ interaction with a smart home interface. In the dynamic help condition, help was only given in response to system errors; in the inherent help condition, it was also given at the start of each task. Fifteen older and sixteen younger users interacted with a smart home system using two different scenarios. Each scenario consisted of several tasks. The linguistic style users employed to communicate with the system (interaction style) was measured using the ratio of commands to the overall utterance length (keyword ratio) and the percentage of content words in the user’s utterance that could be understood by the system (shared vocabulary). While the timing of help prompts did not affect the interaction style of younger users, it was early task-specific help supported older users in adapting their interaction style to the system’s capabilities. Well-placed help prompts can significantly increase the usability of spoken dialogue systems for older people.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1007/s10209-009-0184-x
Universal Access in the Information Society
Keywords
Field
DocType
spoken dialogue systems usability older adults smart homes help prompts
Computer science,Usability,Utterance,Home automation,Human–computer interaction,Multimedia,Vocabulary
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
9
4
1615-5297
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.42
39
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Maria Wolters116815.72
Klaus-Peter Engelbrecht29810.88
Florian Gödde3422.93
Sebastian Möller4877141.17
Anja Naumann514518.17
Robert Schleicher69512.29