Assessing Voice User Interfaces: The vassist system prototype

This paper reports on the results of the first lab trials evaluating the vAssist (Voice Controlled Assistive Care and Communication Services for the Home) system prototype with Italian users. vAssist is an European Project aiming to provide specific voice controlled home care and communication services for elderly. An important vAssist objective is a multilingual Voice User Interface (VUI) in three different languages: Italian, French and German. Lab trials were foreseen in these three different countries to assess the vAssist VUI prototype on realistic user expectations and requirements. The assessment was made letting 43 Italian elderly interact with the VUI prototype in 4-5 defined scenarios, exploiting a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) paradigm and administering to them three questionnaires aimed to measure their perception of the system's usability, learnability and intuitivity. Qualitative and quantitative scores suggested that VUIs are very powerful communication interfaces and were greatly appreciated because of the simplification they provide in the elder everyday use of technological products, such as mobile phones, tablets, and computers.