Voice Interactive System: A Usability Study of the Voice Survey Creator

Abstract

The voice user interface survey is aimed at providing an easier and more efficient way of creating surveys that is conducive to the entire population. This system allows a person to call and create a survey solely over the telephone. The creator is allowed to give an introduction to the survey for its participants to hear. This allows them to provide any specific instructions that may be needed. There are several types of questions that are available for the caller to use in creating the survey. They can use the standard question types such as true or false and yes or no questions. Also available are multiple choice and likert scale questions, and of course there is always the option of a short answer question. There are an unlimited number of questions that can be on the survey and no time limit on the questions. This feature allows the system to be usable for large and small surveys. After each question is recorded by the creator, he or she is then played back the question with the answer choices just like the participant will hear in taking the survey. This allows the creator to make any needed changes to the current question before they move on to the next question they would like to record. This survey application’s goal is to make the survey creator’s job easier by allowing them to construct the entire survey with only telephony access. There is no current application found that allows users to create surveys solely over the phone. As of now, the only available surveys allow the user to create the survey over the web on the computer and then allow the user to take the survey over the telephone. This new system is hopefully a start to a new and more convenient way of creating not only surveys but other applications using voice technology alone. A usability study was conducted in order to try and effectively measure the quality of the system and the user’s experience with the system. The study was aimed at finding how well experts in the usability field felt at how the system conveyed the needed information and instructions to the user. The interaction with a new system and the use of a voice technology was also taken into account when analyzing the results. At the completion of the study, all of the studies findings were complied and analyzed. After careful analysis of the usability study the data reveled that 57 % of the participants would chose the VUI Survey Tool over a paper-based survey and a computer Internet based survey. It was also recorded that a median score of 4 out 5 that the participants strongly agreed that they would use the survey application tool again in the future.