Description:

Interfaces that talk and listen are populating computers, cars, call centers, and even home appliances and toys, but voice interfaces invariably frustrate rather than help. In Wired for Speech, Clifford Nass and Scott Brave reveal how interactive voice technologies can readily and effectively tap into the automatic responses all speech -- whether from human or machine -- evokes. Wired for Speech demonstrates that people are "voice-activated": we respond to voice technologies as we respond to actual people and behave as we would in any social situation. By leveraging this powerful finding, voice interfaces can truly emerge as the next frontier for efficient, user-friendly technology.

Wired for Speech presents new theories and experiments and applies them to critical issues concerning how people interact with technology-based voices. It considers how people respond to a female voice in e-commerce (does stereotyping matter?), how a car's voice can promote safer driving (are "happy" cars better cars?), whether synthetic voices have personality and emotion (is sounding like a person always good?), whether an automated call center should apologize when it cannot understand a spoken request ("To Err is Interface; To Blame, Complex"), and much more. Nass and Brave's deep understanding of both social science and design, drawn from ten years of research at Nass's Stanford laboratory, produces results that often challenge conventional wisdom and common design practices. These insights will help designers and marketers build better interfaces, scientists construct better theories, and everyone gain better understandings of the future of the machines that speak with us.

Clifford Nass is Professor, Department of Communication, and Codirector, Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, at Stanford University. He is the author of The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places.

Scott Brave is a postdoctoral scholar, Department of Communication, at Stanford University.

Table of Contents:

Preface	ix
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	A Note to Readers	xix
1	Wired for Speech: Activating the Human-Computer Relationship	1
2	Gender of Voices: Making Interfaces Male or Female	9
3	Gender Stereotyping of Voices: Sex is Everywhere	19
4	Personality of Voices: Similars Attract	33
5	Personality of Voices and Words: Multiple Personalities are Dangerous	47
6	Accents, Race, and Ethnicity: It's Who You Are, Not What You Look Like	61
7	User Emotion and Voice Emotion: Talking Cars Should Know Their Drivers	73
8	Voice and Content Emotions: Why Voice Interfaces Need Acting Lessons	85
9	When Are Many Voices Better Than One? People Differentiate Synthetic Voices	97
10	Should Voice Interfaces Say "I"? Recorded and Synthetic Voice Interfaces' Claims to Humanity	113
11	Synthetic versus Recorded Voices and Faces: Don't Look the Look If You Can't Talk the Talk	125
12	Mixing Synthetic and Recorded Voices: When "Better" is Worse	143
13	Communications Contexts: The Effects of Type of Input on User Behaviors and Attitudes	157
14	Misrecognition: To Err Is Interface; To Blame, Complex	171
15	Conclusion: From Listening to and Talking at to Speaking with	183
	Notes	185
	Author Index	271
	Subject Index	285