Performance differences in a cross-cultural comparison of voice enhanced interface

The increasing power of computer hardware is enabling the user interface to enter a new dimension, where voice enhanced interfaces can remove the barrier between people and the machine for some users. In this study the traditional keyboard and mouse interface (TI) was compared with voice enhanced interface (VEI). An automatic semester grade calculation software was developed in visual basic and enhanced with a “trainable” voice recognition software for Cantonese and English. Results show that there are significant differences in task completion time, number of errors and satisfaction for the traditional keyboard interface and the voice enhanced interface. In addition, contrary to our intuition, native Cantonese speakers had more voice input errors when speaking Cantonese than English. Though voice enhanced interfaces have many potential applications, consideration should be given to the differences between English and spoken languages that are based on tones such as Cantonese. It appears that further development in voice recognition technology is required in order to make voice input widely usable for the Chinese speaking computer users. Relevance to industry Voice input may seem the ultimate input method, since hands free data entry can allow tremendous flexibility. However, the results of this study indicate that, in industry, voice input should be used with caution, especially when tonal languages or safety are involved.