Evaluation of a context-aware voice interface for Ambient Assisted Living: qualitative user study vs. quantitative system evaluation

Michel Vacher (1) , Sybille Caffiau (2) , François Portet (1) , Brigitte Meillon (2) , Camille Roux (3) , Elena Elias (3) , Benjamin Lecouteux (1) , Pedro Chahuara (1)

1 GETALP - Groupe d’Étude en Traduction Automatique/Traitement Automatisé des Langues et de la Parole
2 LIG - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble
3 Floralis - UJF Filiale

This paper presents an experiment with seniors and people with visual impairment in a voice-controlled smart home using the SWEET-HOME system. The experiment shows some weaknesses in automatic speech recognition which must be addressed, as well as the need of better adaptation to the user and the environment. Indeed, users were disturbed by the rigid structure of the grammar and were eager to adapt it to their own preferences. Surprisingly, while no humanoid aspect was introduced in the system, the senior participants were inclined to embody the system. Despite these aspects to improve, the system has been favourably assessed as diminishing most participant fears related to the loss of autonomy.

Mots clés: context- aware inter- action; Computing Methodologies; Information Systems; Computing Milieux; smart home; voice command; assistive technology; user evaluation; ambient intelligence

Domaines: Autre [cs.OH]

Michel Vacher, Sybille Caffiau, François Portet, Brigitte Meillon, Camille Roux, et al.. Evaluation of a context-aware voice interface for Ambient Assisted Living: qualitative user study vs. quantitative system evaluation. ACM - Transactions on Speech and Language Processing, 2015, Special Issue on Speech and Language Processing for AT (Part 3), 7 (issue 2), pp.5:1-5:36. ⟨10.1145/2738047⟩. ⟨hal-01138090v2⟩