Courses

Biju Thankachan

Tampere University, Tampere, Finland,
  • Biju.Thankachan@tuni.fi

Markku Turunen

Tampere University, Tampere, Finland,
  • Markku.Turunen@tuni.fi
Voice User Interface Design – Personas, Prompts and Prosody

The popularity of voice assistants such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Siri, has infused fresh interest in the field of Voice User Interfaces (VUIs). For most trivial tasks such as asking for weather or playing music, these assistants seem to work seamlessly. However, if one digs deeper and starts to have a prolonged conversation, the fault lines come to the fore and the user is left with frustration. The complexity of human language, human-machine conversation, common-sense knowledge poses a challenge to the VUI designer. At the same time, carefully designed system would add value to the user in terms of user experience and engagement. It is in this context, personas, prompts, and prosody plays an important part in VUI design.

The goal of this course is to introduce the audience to the topic of personas, prompts and prosody with reference to Voice User Interfaces. The course will discuss the importance of designing personas and prompts, their importance in voice user interfaces. A good persona will go a long way in influencing the users of the system. On the other, good prompt design will be helpful in having a clear interaction with the system and reducing errors. There will be a section on prosody design, and how prosody can make the conversations more natural.