Human voice on machines
Professor Clifford Nass from Stanford University has done some remarkable tests on talking machines. According to his research, published in the Book Wired for Speech, the tone of voice used by machines such as the car navigator, for example, has great impact on how humans receive and react to the message.
According to his tests, a happy driver drives more safely if the navigator talks to him in a happy tone of voice. When the driver is feeling moody, however, it is better for the machine to talk in a more serious voice. Humans are used to reacting to spoken words in a certain way, and even though we know that we are listening to a machine, our brains tell us that it is a human voice and react accordingly.
Next step is then to study how the machine could find out what mood we are in, and change their voice to fit the atmosphere. Cool!
According to his tests, a happy driver drives more safely if the navigator talks to him in a happy tone of voice. When the driver is feeling moody, however, it is better for the machine to talk in a more serious voice. Humans are used to reacting to spoken words in a certain way, and even though we know that we are listening to a machine, our brains tell us that it is a human voice and react accordingly.
Next step is then to study how the machine could find out what mood we are in, and change their voice to fit the atmosphere. Cool!
I really enjoy the insights that Cliff and his colleagues shed on our perceptions and judgments about technologies. In Tom Vanderbilt's excellent book on "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)", I read about the DriveCam system, a system for enhancing automotive safety in which a camera in a car records events surrounding sudden movements, which are later analyzed and used to provide feedback to drivers ... and drivers' parents or employers (depending on the context of use). I wonder whether real-time computer speech responding to detected and recorded events would increase the safety of the system ... or lead to decreased adoption.
Reply to this
Thanks for this. It really helped me out!
Reply to this