| Surveys about interactive voice response systems (IVRs) report high levels of dissatisfaction, especially among older users. To identify the problems IVR users experience, 22 senior women and 22 female students were monitored while they performed six IVR tasks. As predicted, old age had a negative impact on performance, but seniors were polarized into very poor and very good performers. Seniors gave lower usability ratings than young people; only young users gave high ratings to the one voice-activated system. No consistent associations were found between performance, ratings, prior experience of technology; and scores on an attention/memory test. Users' problems were mostly caused by design flaws, the most frequent being unclear choices/instructions and too-rapid automated voices. Most young users overcame all difficulties, but the majority of seniors failed because of age-related losses in their capacities. The solution is not special products for the old, but universal design that will make IVRs and other technological products easier for everyone. |
