Abstract
To support older users’ accessibility and learning of the prevalent information and communication technologies (ICTs), libraries, as informal learning institutes, are committed to information literacy education activities with friendly interfaces. Chatbots using Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) with natural and intuitive interactions have received growing research and practical attention; however, older users report regular frustrations and problems in using them. To serve as a basis for the subsequent design and development of an automated dialog mechanism in senior-friendly chatbots, a between-subject user experiment was conducted with 30 older adults divided into three groups. The preliminary findings on their interactions with the voice chatbots designed with different error handling strategies were reported. Participants’ behavioral patterns, performances, and the tactics they employed in interacting with the three types of chatbots were analyzed. The results of the study showed that the use of multiple error handling strategies is beneficial for older users to achieve effectiveness and satisfaction in human-robot interactions, and facilitate their attitude toward information technology. This study contributes empirical evidence in the genuine and pragmatic field of gerontechnology and expands upon voice chatbots research by exploring conversation errors in human-robot interactions that could be of further application in designing educational and living gerontechnology.
Highlights
In response to the popularity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the increasing proportion of older adult users, facilitating older users’ access to information is gaining research and practical attention
The ANOVA was used to compare the performance of the three groups of users, and the results showed that subjects who interacted with Chatbot C, which used reprompt and confirmation error handling strategies, spent significantly more time than did those interacting with Chatbot S and Chatbot R (F = 5.7159, p < 0.01)
The participants in Group R were the fastest to complete the task, but they spent a larger percentage of their time dealing with errors, while Group C spent more time in proceeding conversation with the voice chatbot
Summary
In response to the popularity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the increasing proportion of older adult users, facilitating older users’ access to information is gaining research and practical attention. Since the user characteristics are highly associated with the technological affordance of the system interface and modalities, these studies suggested more research attention on users’ behaviors, performance, and preferences (Oviatt et al, 1998; Bulyko et al, 2005; Portet et al, 2013; Lu et al, 2017). Based on the systematic investigation on older users’ conversational behaviors, performances, and experiences from the error handling perspective, this study intends to present a senior-friendly VUI conversation model as a basis for designing conversational AI chatbots in the future
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