Simulation Based Usability Study Of Interactive Voice Response Systems

As the rapid development of domestic economy, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems have played an important role in people's daily life. Though IVR systems have penetrated into our life, people still meet various difficulties and confuses. As for users, how to make systems satisfy their needs;as for designers and usability engineers, which methods are used to find and solve these problems? Through the research work of this thesis, we can mine the answers of these questions in a certain extent.Under requirements of usability research on IVR systems, a tool is designed. It can simulate IVR systems. At the same time, it can trace users' behavior during interacting with IVR systems. Then it automatically analyzes these data and visualizes the results. It can also analyze the structure of IVR systems according to the guideline for designing IVR systems so as to assist usability engineers to well design and develop IVR systems. Later, we conducted some tentative case studies on IVRDET. In this thesis, we introduced case studies on three Tele-banking systems in detail by using the tool of IVRDET. Through these case studies, we checked the validity of IVRDET. We also summarized usability problems existing in current Tele-banking systems and IVR systems, which should be solved in emergency. At the same time, we presented some methods to solve these usability problems so as to offer valuable guidelines for designers and developers of IVR systems.There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter One, usability engineering and usability development of IVR are introduced. Chapter Two, the related usability knowledge of IVR and simulation based usability study of IVR systems are presented. Chapter Three is about systems design and systems flow of IVRDET. Chapter Four introduced case studies and results in three Tele-banking systems. Chapter Five is the conclusion of the thesis.