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Introduction

Voice User Interface (VUI), ‘you talking to your mobile, and your mobile talking to you’, has been available in mobile handsets for almost 10 years. Most handsets have the ability to either voice tag, or voice dial. At the same time, there are some new apps and services that are using VUI such as Spinvox, Reqall, Yahoo! One Search, and Google’s search app for the iPhone. VUI is a logical user interface for mobile users, particularly those in a hands-free environment, yet we have found that 56%of mobile consumers have never used VUI on their mobile, 64%^,are unlikely to use VUI if there’s a choice, and 13% would never use VUI.

The research has sought to explain why and when VUI does work for mobile users, and what type of mobile customers they are. Through a new mobile consumer segmentation for voice, this report shows that 25% of high value mobile customers are ready to play with VUI apps and devices on their mobile. However, due to technical, social, psychological and accessibility factors, VUI has little or limited value today for the majority of users.

This report analyses the state of market maturity for use of VUI in mobile applications and devices. As well as looking at technology, user experience, expectations and customer needs are analysed through the segmentation model. Through understanding the human and technical demands of VUI, it is possible to see how radically mobile user experience design will change in the next 20 years, and how important it is to consider user capabilities, their social context and their relationship with their mobile whenever consider using voice in (but never as), the user interface.

Who is this research for?

The research was written from the perspective of product and innovation management within the international mobile telecoms sector. Accordingly, it is primarily aimed at product managers, marketers, user experience designers and developers in that sector, whether or not they are currently working with VUI. However, the report may also be of interest to others working in the wider ICT sector as well as students and researchers.

It is unlikely that this will teach anyone currently working with VUI anything new about the technology or industry, but will give insights into how best to exploit the available mobile market with VUI applications and services.

Research Objectives

Our key objective for the research is that it should be of practical utility, enabling and informing the development of more usable and useful mobile apps and devices.

To this end, we have sought to:

Identify key barriers to market maturity, such as cost and complexity in the ‘voice delivery value chain’, and possible break-through strategies
Analyse the potential impact of VUI on product and service development techniques, customer requirements and user experience design.

Research Method
Sound Barriers, is an Open Research project, led and funded by Inglis Jane Ltd. The aim of the research is to answer two key questions:

1) Has Voice as a User Interface finally come of age?
2) If so, what does this mean for mobile apps and devices and for their designers, developers and users?

The research had two phases:

Qualitative research through desk research and a series of interviews with experts from across the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) sector. The discussion guide that was used for the interviews can be viewed here.) An open and shared spreadsheet of different VUI apps, and services for mobile is available here.
Quantitative research, through an online consumer survey. 559 completed responses were received from mobile users. 23 responses were submitted using a beta product called ‘SurveyBee’ which carried out the survey using an instant messenger conversation. 30 responses were collected via paper, 35% of respondents worked in ICT. This lends a slight bias to results of this survey, which should be borne in mind.This may also account for the 52 / 48 male / female split in the surveyed group.

Scope

The scope is best described from a user’s perspective: ‘you talking to your mobile’, and your ‘mobile talking to you’.

For the purposes of the consumer survey, using cartoons depicting voice dialling, a written description, and a video mash-up showing VUI in action.

Out of scope were IVR or call-centre services, PC Dictation and specialist applications such as those in use in the military, or those used for translation. Out of scope, too, were investigations into different cultural or ethnic contexts for the purpose of analysing consumer attitudes to voice.

Key Findings

During the research it quickly became clear that VUI is best viewed as two types of interface:
1) Simple VUI – Highly structured, command through words very simple and limited vocabulary. The application or device simply recognises words.
2) Intelligent VUI – Natural, intuitive voice interactions with a wide vocabulary. The application or device understands sentences, context and goal.

Speech recognition and voice-control technologies, used as Simple VUI, have advanced considerably in the last 10 years in terms of accuracy and availability, but VUI fails when it is inappropriate to the function, situation or user. VUI technology today is not smart enough to understand the very complex information carried through voice. There are also structural issues within the voice technology sector which prohibit innovation and more widespread adoption. Fundamental changes in the market structure need to occur before VUI can be a true alternative user interface for mobile applications & devices. Furthermore, the future of VUI is highly dependent on other technical evolutions within the mobile sector. Until voice is regarded as data, the true potential of this market may never be unlocked.

Many users have negative attitudes towards using VUI, formed through poor experience of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. 70% of consumers have negative responses to IVR. It is not surprising then, 50%of users would use VUI if it was the only appropriate user interface, but only 13%will do so if there is a choice between VUI and other types of UI.

The measures of capability and perceived usability of VUI show very clearly how important sensory and manual capabilities are in terms of preference for VUI. 16% of consumers in all age-groups often find it difficult to their mobile’s screen and use the touch-screen or keypad, and a surprising 10% of under 25’s ‘very often’ find it difficult to use the touch-screen or keypad. Therefore, users in excluded groups; blind & visually impaired, elderly, illiterate, emerging markets, all have compelling reasons to use VUI. However, the general accessibility and usability of mobile apps and devices, is a considerable impediment to uptake of VUI largely excluding some 23% of users. Although excluded themselves from using VUI, customers who are hearing or speech impaired, VUI technologies are important tools in enabling these customers to communicate with the hearing world.

The relationship that customers have with their mobile ‘phones and how they relate to them in different social contexts, is a key factor shaping different users’ attitudes towards VUI. Voice as a mass-market UI is unlikely to be successful until we can teach machines to talk like humans. Other barriers to market maturity are related to scalability, cost in the speech interface delivery value-chain and end market user perception.

Mass-market use of Simple VUI is perhaps 5-10 years out, VUI applications and technologies will get progressively more intelligent, and in 20-30 years time there will be early adoption of truly Intelligent VUI, which is part of a complex, sensory multi-modal user interface.

Whilst it is clear that Simple VUI can now be used in mobile apps and devices as part of the user-experience, it is also clear that Intelligent VUI, is some way off becoming a real part of mass market mobile user-experience. If we consider that Simple VUI is ‘the user thinking like the machine’ where as Intelligent VUI is ‘the machine thinking like the user’, then it seems likely that we will end up with neither Intelligent nor Simple VUI, rather some kind of hybrid. VUI technology will develop, and will make use of intelligence in the network, and multi-sensory user interfaces in mobile. The complexity of this indicates that humans will not be able to design and develop these services alone, instead we will need the cloud to do it for us. Intelligent VUI will be designoid mobile services.

The rate and timing of the technical development may be fairly predictable; but the changes in human behaviour, in how we think about use of speech in relation to machines, and in how we come to use our mobile devices in the future, is much less predictable. The current generation of mobile product managers, developers and designers have different experience and attitudes towards communications in general, compared to the ‘mobile generation’. Younger users are focused on visual and text-based communications.

Use of VUI in mobile apps and devices is not the goal. An intelligent, multi-modal UI, of which VUI is a part, probably is.

Inclusive and Intelligent Mobile User Experience Design

Sound Barriers has demonstrated more clearly than ever the importance of increased use of Inclusive and User-Centred design practices in mobile application and device design and development. It shown glimpses of new skills and talents that we will need to design mobile user experience of the future, as well as offering tools and techniques to make user experience of today better, more accessible and more usable. There are perhaps five main aspects to this, they are what we might call Intelligent Mobile User Experience Design.

Use of multi-sensory user interfaces to gather redundant information and detect context
Multiple user paths dependent on analysis of data and application of intelligence, leading to increased personalisation of services
More multi-disciplinary teams: a rich and multi-faceted understanding of how users think and behave becomes as important as understanding how the technology works and behaves
Continuous product development and enhancement by the users themselves
As well as capability axis sensory, physical and cognitive, designers must also consider social factors. Devices and applications will have their capabilities measured in the same way as we currently measure users.