Guidelines for Speech-Enabled IVR Application Design

Although guidelines and standards have been developed for the design of the user interface for interactive voice response (IVR) applications, most of these documents consider only menu-driven, touch-tone-based IVR application designs with little, if any, attention being given to IVR systems that employ speech recognition and/or natural language dialogues. This chapter presents the history of user interface guidelines development for IVR applications and discusses two issues—menu-driven user interfaces and anthropomorphism—to illustrate how guidelines for speech-enabled IVR user interfaces may differ from those for touch-tone-based IVR designs. In addition, current guidelines specific to speech recognition-based IVR applications, incorporated in a document currently being developed for the American National Standards Institute by the HFES-200 Committee of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, are described.