How Do Illiterate People Interact with an Intelligent Voice Assistant?

Abstract

The use of intelligent voice assistants is enabling people who previously could not easily interact with a graphical interface to have access to digital services. However recent works have shown that voice assistants fail to attend certain types of user’s profile. Our research focus on the interaction to an IVA with people with illiterate people. An investigation was made into the use of Google Assistant by literate and illiterate people. In order to verify if the assistant can understand the commands spoken to it, an experiment was conducted with 45 people. The experiment indicates that two characteristics are essential to be improved in the IVA while interacting to illiterates: the ability to understand a more diverse and specific vocabulary of this audience, and an ability to understand the grammatical structure of sentences produced in an ad hoc manner by them. As a suggestion to minimize the problem, we think that AVI should be designed to include illiterate people, specially in developing economy countries, otherwise those assistants will be a factor to increase digital exclusion for poor populations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CNPQ, FUNCAP.

Notes on contributors

Thiago H. O. da Silva

Thiago Hellen Oliveira da Silva is a Software Engineer at the NuBank. His research interests are Human-Computer interaction, Software engineering and User Experience. He has received the Master Degree in Computer Science from University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR), Fortaleza – Brazil.

Vasco Furtado

Vasco Furtado is Professor at the University of Fortaleza (Unifor), Brazil. His research interests are data science, intelligent systems and smart cities. He has received the PhD degree in Computer Science from the Aix-Marseille III, France.

Elizabeth Furtado

Elizabeth Sucupira Furtado is Professor at the University of Fortaleza (Unifor), Brazil. Her research interests are human-computer interaction, Software Engineering and User Experience. She has received the PhD degree in Computer Science from the Aix-Marseille III, France.

Marilia Mendes

Marília Soares Mendes is a Professor at the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC). Master in Applied Informatics and Bachelor in Informatics from the University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR). Her research interests focus mainly on the Human-Computer Interaction Area.

Virgilio Almeida

Virgilio Almeida is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). He is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. His research interests focus on social computing, algorithms, and modelling and analysis of large-scale distributed systems.

Lanna Sales

Lanna Lygia de Lima Sales is pursuing her PhD at the University of Fortaleza (Unifor), Brazil. Her research interests are Human-computer interaction and User Experience.