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John P. Chin
Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs, Business Communications Systems
200 Laurel Avenue, Room 2C-413
Middletown, NJ 07748
Phone: 908-957-6193, Email: jpchin@lucent.com
Abstract briefly outlines the key findings
Keywords lists the overall categories encompassing this work
Introduction describes the two major questions being addressed
Methodology explains how the data was collected in this study
Results regarding the most frequently selected traits are discussed
Table lists the means, standard deviations and rankings of traits
Acknowledgements to members on the project team
References lists the papers and previous work this study relies upon
The present study assesses user perceptions of current voice mail systems and identifies desirable traits that should be incorporated in future agent-based products. Both novices and experts ascribed similar personality traits to voice mail user interfaces: practical, intelligent, courteous, efficient, straight-forward, sophisticated, methodical, progressive and alert. Surprisingly, significantly more experts desired a more imaginative personality than novices. Moreover, 20% of the experts did not associate imaginative with voice mail systems tested. The results suggest that future voice mail user interface for experts should project an imaginative quality.
KEYWORDS: Phone-based Interfaces, Voice Mail, Personality, Agents.
An essential part of an effective and desirable interface is the ability to communicate with the user in a constructive dialogue. Recent research found that users preferred interfaces with personalities similar to their own (i.e. dominant users prefer dominant interfaces) [6]. Users rated the application as more competent when the personality of the user and the interface are consonant. The user interface must project a system image that the user can understand conceptually. A poor match between the user interface design and the user's conceptual model of telephony will limit the understanding of, use of and satisfaction with telephony applications, particularly Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) [2].
In phone-based user interfaces, there is an imbalance in the user interactions with many Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and voice mail systems. IVRs present lengthy voice prompts or audio menus that restrict user responses to a series of touch-tone key presses. These interfaces lack the natural conversational flow found when human secretaries take messages or route calls. Recently, voice processing platforms have incorporated speech recognition capabilities and the metaphor of a secretary as a means to engage the user in a more conversational style interface. Moreover, the system's image of a secretary would be reinforced by projecting a distinctive personality. Some contend that an anthropomorphic agent should have the personality of "someone you'd like to work with" rather than the "unctuous clingy feel" found in current IVRs [4]. Rather than rely on ancedotal evidence or intuitive judgments that are poorly articulated, studies should be conducted to systematically determine personality attributes of current voice mail systems.
Before designing new agent-based user interfaces, it is important to assess the user perceptions of current systems and identify desirable traits that should be incorporated in future products. The present study addresses two questions:
Two groups, 25 novices and 25 experts, performed nine tasks:
After completing these tasks, respondents described the "personality" of the voice mail system by rating it with 84 different traits on a scale from 1 to 7 [5]. For example, if respondents thought the system was very intelligent, they assigned a seven. If they did not judge it as very intelligent, they assigned a one. If the trait was not applicable, no rating was associated with the trait. Next, participants selected 10 of the traits that they felt were desirable attributes for a voice mail system, including those traits that were deemed not applicable to the system tested. One novice did not rate the voice mail system. Another novice rated the voice mail system but did not select any of the traits as desirable.
Respondents selected 45 different traits as desirable for voice mail systems. Both experts and novices shared 9 of the 10 top desirable traits for a voice mail system. The top five traits (practical, intelligent, courteous, efficient, straight-forward) were desirable among more than half of the respondents (See Table 1). Previous research found these traits to be positive characteristics along likableness and desirability dimensions [1,3].
Of the 10 most frequently selected traits, experts and novices differed on one pair of traits in which 40% of the experts selected imaginative as a desirable trait compared to 16% of the novices, X2(1)=10.28, p<.05. Surprisingly, 20% of the experts and 4% of the novices indicated that imaginative as not applicable to the voice mail system they used but selected imaginative as a desirable trait in voice mail. Both novice and expert associative ratings of imaginative were significantly lower than the overall mean ratings across the top 10 desirable traits (mean=5.22, SD=1.71), t(10)=2.61, p<.05. The results suggest that voice mail user interfaces need to be more imaginative.
Future investigations should explore how a more imaginative personality can be incorporated into voice mail systems. In addition, more work needs to be done to determine how users could benefit from imaginative personalities.
The author thanks Deanna Clark, Karen Hewitt, and Mary Siringo for data collection assistance. The author also thanks Yao Tsao for his help verifying and analyzing data.
TABLE 1. Most frequently selected desirable personality traits in voice mail systems
Traits Assoicated with Voice Mail Desired Voice Mail Traits Experts Novices Overall Experts Novices (N=25) (N=24) (49) (N=25) (N=23) Trait Mean SD. Mean SD. Mean SD. Percent Rank Percent Rank practical 6.00 1.19 5.61 1.67 5.81 1.44 88 1 68 1 intelligent 5.58 1.38 5.43 1.50 5.51 1.42 84 2 68 2 courteous 5.52 1.59 5.10 1.85 5.33 1.69 76 3 68 3 efficient 5.92 1.58 5.67 1.57 5.80 1.57 76 4 60 4 straight-forward 5.50 1.53 5.09 1.62 5.30 1.57 68 5 52 5 sophisticated 5.08 1.32 5.04 1.65 5.06 1.47 64 6 36 7 methodical 5.72 1.62 5.52 1.56 5.62 1.58 64 7 44 6 progressive 5.04 2.08 5.47 1.94 5.22 2.01 60 8 28 9 imaginative 3.67 2.09 3.94 2.31 3.81 2.18 40 9 16 15 alert 5.20 1.88 5.68 1.82 5.43 1.85 36 10 24 10 scientific-minded 4.29 1.99 4.65 2.08 4.49 2.02 28 12 32 8 Overall Top 10 5.23 1.66 5.20 1.78 5.22 1.71
Mean: Mean rating each personality trait associated with current voice mail system evaluated on a 7 point scale
Percent: Percentage of respondents who selected the personality trait as a desirable for voice mail systems
Rank: Desirability of traits according to percentage of respondents
1. Anderson, N. H. Likableness ratings of 555 Personality-Trait words, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (1968), 9(3), 272-279.
2. Bennett, R. W. and Klinger, J. G. Conceptual Models of Telephony and their Implications for interface design. 13th International Symposium: Human Factors in Telecommunications, Italy, (September 1990) 41-48.
3. Bochner, S. and Van Zyl, T. Desirability ratings of 110 personality-trait words. Journal of Social Psychology, (1985), 125(4) 459-465.
4. Bulkeley, W. M. Will ultimate voice mail make secretaries obsolete, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 1995.
5. Katz, D. and Braly, K. W. Racial prejudice and racial stereotypes. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 30(2), July-September, 1933, 175-193.
6. Nass, C., Moon, Y., Fogg, B.J., Reeves, B. and Dryer, C. Can computer personalities be human personalities. CHI'95 Conference Companion, 228-229.