1. Designing Speech and Multimodal Applications for Seniors
Deborah Dahl
Conversational Technologies
SpeechTEK 2009

2. Why Design for Seniors? The social reasons: The business reasons:
Make it possible for seniors to fully benefit from technology
Use technology to assist seniors in their daily lives
The business reasons:
Take advantage of a big and growing market
Reduce health care costs
technology-based rehab
aging in place
Improve containment in call centers

3. Kinds of Senior Applications
Call center applications that provide value primarily to older users
Call center applications that need to be used by a demographic that includes older users
Assistive technologies that help older users in everyday life
Rehab applications that help senior users improve functions that have been compromised by aging or a disease

4. Why do Seniors Need Special Design Considerations?
Changes due to aging are familiar to everyone
These changes can affect how well someone can use an application
Many kinds of changes in all areas of life
Physical, cognitive, social, psychological…
Physical and cognitive changes may be most relevant to speech and multimodal applications
Effects of physical changes may be more significant than cognitive changes

5. Physical Changes
Perceptual – vision (presbyopia, macular degeneration, cataracts), hearing loss
Motor– manual dexterity, physical mobility
Effects of chronic diseases – for example, diseases that affect breathing
Speaking ability

6. Cognitive
Cognitive changes tend to not be as dramatic as physical changes
Working memory
Attention -- difficulty in focusing, distractability
Learning – learning may take longer
Processing speed– processing new information may be slower
Language comprehension– may be slower because of general slowdown in processing new information
Language production – slower word retrieval

7. All of these factors may be relevant to design for seniors
Everyone is different!
Does the application have to accommodate people of all ages and abilities, or is it just focused on seniors?

8. Some Specific Considerations

9. Speech-only applications
User has to be able to hear and comprehend prompts
Speech volume, rate, vocabulary, syntactic and semantic complexity of prompts can affect comprehension and memory for choices
User has to be able to respond within the timeout period
Speaking ability doesn’t necessarily degrade with age, but people may speak more slowly
Length of speech timeout may need to be adjusted
DTMF responses may be slowed by limited dexterity or ability to see the keypad
Recognizer may need to be trained on older voices

10. Multimodal Applications
GUI and speech modalities can complement each other
Text display of prompt can assist users who are hard of hearing and it can also provide a memory aid by persisting
Spoken prompts can be useful for users who can’t see well
Touch screen can assist users who can’t use a mouse
Speech input can be used when using a keyboard is too difficult

11. Summary
To accommodate senior users, designers must take into account the physical and cognitive changes related to aging

12. Discussion