Voice User Interface Design VUI

NPR has a very interesting that explores how human behavior isn’t limited to real world interactions but actually extends to others types of interactions, including virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Which makes me wonder… if it’s in our nature to balance things such as personal distance and eye contact in both the real and virtual world, what other ‘rules’ are we bringing in into our day to day interactions with the phone?

I know similar topics have been discussed previously in articles and books such as Clifford Nass’ “The Media Equation” , but it was fascinating to me to realize that those same behaviors aren’t exclusive to people-to-computer interactions but that also affect virtual representations of ourselves.

This of course explains why callers sometimes have such gut reactions to some of the designs and interactions out there – reactions that are hardwired in their systems or have been socially learned. And why when we violate some of those interaction conventions and real-world rules, it makes it psychologically uncomfortable for our callers.

Let’s just keep that in mind (and let’s remind our customers) the next time we model systems around real-world interactions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Customer Experience, Dialog Design, Speech Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.