Voice Activated: The Psychology and Design of Interfaces that Talk and Listen

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Speaker
Clifford Nass
Professor of Communication, Stanford University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

Voice is the fundamental means of human communication. Humans have evolved voices that convey and listening apparatuses that identify a wide range of cues that provide socially relevant information. In this talk, I’ll describe a series of new experiments that elaborate how individuals apply social rules and heuristics when responding to to synthesized and recorded speech in interfaces. Some of the questions to be addressed include: Are multiple synthetic voices different than one? Can the gender of a synthetic voice influence voting behavior? Should agent ethnicity match voice ethnicity?

How are perceptions of speech recognition quality influenced by mis-rec feedback? When should interfaces say “I”? How does voice gender influence Web sales? For each study, I will discuss the experimental results and the implications for design.

Speaker's Bio

Clifford Nass is a professor of communication at Stanford University, with appointments by courtesy in computer science, science technology and society, sociology, and symbolic systems (cognitive science). He is author of The Media Equation (with Byron Reeves), the forthcoming Voice Activated: The Psychology and Design of Interfaces that Talk or Listen, and over 60 articles in the areas of social responses to media and methodology.

He has consulted on the design of over 100 consumer products and services for companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, US West, Sony, Philips, and OMRON.

Speaker's Website
http://www.stanford.edu/~nass/comm369/