Designing flexible voice assistants to support indoor navigation.

Designers should create voice assistants allowing customizable settings for personalized, functional interaction and different contexts, supporting both blind and sighted users effectively.

About this paper

The author explored extending the capabilities of voice assistants for indoor navigation through focus groups with blind and sighted airport travelers, finding common difficulties and shared interest in a voice-activated travel assistant.

The study presents interaction design examples for customizing multiple modalities to enhance transactional interactions in complex tasks.

Here are some methods used in this study:

Focus Groups Thematic Analysis

Which part of the paper did the design guideline come from?

“In their discussions regarding features for a travel assistant, participants indicated ways in which they would like to configure different settings on the assistant to meet their personal preferences and goals (Table 6). These included customizing to different modes of operation, filtering the environmental information provided, and customizing based upon personal preferences. Participants (eight blind, four sighted) were interested in setting the travel assistant to operate in different (...)” (Section 4.4.6: FINDINGS)

Abdolrahmani, A., Howes Gupta, M., Vader, M.-L., Kuber, R., & Branham, S. (2021). Towards More Transactional Voice Assistants: Investigating the Potential for a Multimodal Voice-Activated Indoor Navigation Assistant for Blind and Sighted Travelers. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Inspiration and scope

This paper examines the characteristics of blind and sighted travelers in indoor airport navigation.

You aim to design for sighted users who wish to ease eye strain and visually impaired people. Both contexts prioritize accessible navigation systems, needing features like audio guides, haptic feedback, and high-contrast visuals.

Also, providing real-time feedback is key for navigation and user satisfaction. Both require real-time, location-specific guidance and dynamic updates.

Leveraging these similarities, consider designing a mobile app with audio-haptic feedback, customizable speech output, and high-contrast visuals. This will provide timely navigational assistance, enhancing user confidence and efficiency.

Your input

  • What: I'm designing a mobile navigation app with complete audio guide.
  • Who: I'm designing for both sighted users who want to reduce burden on eyes and visually impaired people.
  • Design stage: Research, Ideation

Understanding users

The following user needs and pain points may apply to your design target as well:

Real-Time Audio Alerts and Guidance

Implementing real-time audio alerts can help users, including the visually impaired, receive immediate updates about navigation. This can prevent disorientation and make the navigation experience smoother.

Customizable Audio Guidance

Allow users to customize audio guidance settings such as voice speed, verbosity, and type of alerts. This personalizes the navigation experience, addressing unique preferences and needs in dynamic environments.

Design ideas

Consider the following components for your design:

1

Implement customizable speech output settings including voice type, speed, and verbosity.

2

Incorporate haptic feedback such as vibrations for turn-by-turn navigation and alerts.

3

Design a high-contrast, easy-to-use interface that minimizes eye strain.

Methods for you

Consider the following method(s) used in this paper for your design work:

Mixed-Ability Focus Groups

Conducting mixed-ability focus groups helps gather diverse user insights, which is crucial for addressing varied accessibility needs in a navigation app. It’s important to ensure that the focus groups include both sighted and visually impaired users, allowing the designer to capture comprehensive user requirements.

Inductive Thematic Coding

Using inductive thematic coding can help analyze qualitative data systematically, identifying common themes and needs of users which can inform the design ideation process. Keep the open coding and theme generation flexible enough to adapt to new insights as the designer progresses with the data.

[Table 3] From this figure, you can gain insights into voice command interactions for helping with navigation, which is crucial for your mobile navigation app with audio guidance.