Acoustic user interfaces for ambient-assisted living technologies
This contribution discusses technologies for acoustic user interaction in ambient-assisted living (AAL) scenarios. Acoustic user interfaces allow for a natural and convenient way to interact with technical systems e.g. via sound or speech presentation or via speech input by means of automatic speech recognition (ASR) as well as by detection and classification of acoustic events. Older persons targeted by AAL technologies especially need more easy-to-use methods to interact with inherently complex supporting technology. As an example we designed and evaluated an application for acoustic user interaction with a multi-media reminder and calendar system. For this purpose, mainly older participants were involved in user studies to continuously evaluate and support the development strictly following a user-centred design process. The results suggest a wide acceptance of acoustic user interfaces by older users either for controlling inherently complex AAL systems by using robust ASR technologies or as a natural ...
This case study addresses how we applied user centered design (UCD) to the software development lifecycle for the new City of Austin Utilities Online Customer Care website. The case study focuses on the use of personas, prototypes, and user testing, discusses what worked well, and provides lessons learned.