In the midst of the pandemic COVID-19, forcing every functional unit of the world to come to a halt, people all over the world have opted to live the digital life with classes being conducted online, meetings being conducted virtually, people connecting through various social media platforms, etc. Despite the fact that the pandemic has brought down the physical functioning of the world, people have still managed to find an alternative to keep the world functioning.
What is DETAUX by Designerrs Lab?
DETAUX (Designerrs Talks) by Designerrs Lab is a series of networking and knowledge sharing events for design enthusiasts to DETAUX (aka. Detox) yourself from misconceptions and learn about various topics in the field of Product Design, UI/UX Design, Design Thinking, Conversational Design, and Immersive Experiences.
We conducted our 5th DETAUX Event on 9th May 2020 on the topic “Designing Usable Voice Interactions” with Akshay Kore as the speaker who is currently a Product Designer at Observe.ai. He has also worked with Multinational companies like Microsoft and ClearTax.
In case you missed the talk, below is an overview of it:
Voice/Speech is arguably one of the most natural ways of interacting with anyone or anything. From our personal smart assistants walking us through our calendar to home pods playing our favourite music on demand, Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) have become an integral component of our day to day lives.
What is a Voice User Interface or a VUI?
A VUI or Voice User Interface allows people to engage and interact with computers, machines and devices by using voice commands. It is used to initiate an automated service or process and is fast becoming one of the most popular ways for users to interact with computers and devices.
Voice Interactions are becoming all the rage today and evolving rapidly. 55% of households are expected to own smart speakers by 2022. Could Voice be the next frontier in designing Human-Computer Interactions?
Some Current Famous Examples of VUIs
Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Echo (Alexa), Google Home, Samsung’s Bixby, etc., use VUI to assist us in accessing the services provided by their platforms. Implicitly we have also gotten used to it. When was the last time you went to the google home page to enquire about the weather in your city?
Wait! You didn’t! you probably just said “Hey Google, what is the weather going to be like today?” and boom! that’s it! Problem solved. Such an engagement minimizes physical movement and empowers the user to extend his/her lazy moment on the couch by enabling a hands-free User Experience.
Why VUI now?
Improved connectivity
India is going through a rapid technological change. As per a report by Bain & Company India, in 2019 there were over 451 million active users in India. The proliferation of internet that is driven by cheap data plans is now making the internet more accessible. Internet speed today is better than ever before. This enhancement has led to the popularisation and mainstreaming of VUIs.
Availability of Data
The rise of giant data centres around the world and advancement in the field of data science coupled with the rapid adaptation of products & services online, we today have large datasets available. These datasets have made it possible to build deeper and richer machine learning and speech recognition models. “The more data that you have, the better your model is”.
Improvements in Speech Recognition models
Presently we have a lot of data collected in the speech recognition domain in the English language. However, as the use of vernacular increases, driven by customers from TIER 2 and TIER 3 cities, we will be able to accumulate enough information to improve the speech recognition models for regional languages.
Availability of Better and Cheaper Computers
The benefits of excessive competition in the global consumer electronic markets have run down to emerging economies like India, resulting in cheaper and higher quality products. The purchase of consumer electronics has grown significantly. We are buying more consumer electronic devices than ever before. These devices, in turn, are performing all sorts of tasks from counting our calorie intake to measuring our heartbeat.
How can we design Voice Interactions?
Designing an effective VUI is a very challenging task. Voice communication has been and still continues to be one of the most effective and precise modes of Communication and Information exchange. Voice interaction is often associated with interpersonal and private communication and unlike UX designing, there are limited touchpoints for the user.
In Graphical UX Design, for instance, multiple factors collectively decide the User Experience. The colour of the Landing Page, the Colour of the Font, the Organisation of Icons, the Design Language, the Flow of the Interface, the Vibrations, Sound Effects, etc. come together to create a User Interface.
In VUIs however, the key touchpoint is centred around the Conversation. Hence, the Language of the Conversation, the Pace and Flow of the Conversation, the Mannerism, Choice of Words, Choice of Voice becomes very important. Following aspects must be kept in mind while designing an effective Voice User Interface :
One of the most important aspect when designing a VUI is to think of it as a human and how you would normally design interaction with humans, and not think of it as designing a software interface.
Clarity
Clarity is the foremost component that every VUI must ensure. The information being passed on by the user must be clear, minimising the scope for speculation and guesswork. If the command isn’t clearly understood by the system, follow up questions must be asked. For instance, if the user gives a command — “Hey Siri, set an alarm for me”, the VUI must respond with follow up questions such as for what date, what time, am/pm, etc.
Conciseness
Overloading the user with information must be avoided. As important as it is for a VUI to be clear, it is equally important to be concise. Passing on more information than needed leads to sub-optimal results due to the short attention span of most users. Additionally, VUIs are generally triggered to seek a specific piece of information or to perform a very specific task, thus user’s time must be valued. Even in cases where broader questions are asked, the interface must ensure that the answers are provided in the most concise manner possible. The weather command is a good example of that. Every time you ask Siri to check for the weather, it specifies the location, average temperature along with highs and lows.
Complementarity
Though conciseness is an important element of an effective VUI design, it should not hinder the possibilities of the VUI to inform the user of its additional capabilities. For instance, when a command is given to check the date, additional suggestion regarding making a calendar appointment, reminder or event can be made for the user. This not only informs the user but also reduces the friction of manually setting up an event in the calendar. For instance, if you ask your google assistant to read your schedule for the day in the morning and if the assistant finds it empty, it will most likely ask you if you want to set a reminder.
Coverage/Connections
For a VUI to be effective, it is extremely important for it to offer wide coverage of applications. For instance, if a request is made by a user to play music, the VUI should be able to pull its connection with all music playing apps such as Spotify, Saavn, YouTube, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Wynk Music, etc.
Cross-Compatibility
For a VUI to be effective and seamless, it is extremely important for it to offer Cross-Device Compatibility. It should work as seamlessly with the television as it does with the cell-phone and dedicated assistant devices.
The Future of VUI
VUIs are aimed at providing users with a fully immersive experience; varied, complex and more human in nature. We’re not there yet but advancements in technology which slowly allow us to develop more complex algorithms and Softwares apt enough to simulate human behaviours. It has also opened up more opportunities for growth, both at home and in the workplace.
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DETAUX Event on “Designing Usable Voice Interactions” was originally published in DETAUX (Designers Talks) on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.