S-72.400 * Human factors in telecommunications * Project 5.11.1999
Petri Jäppilä 40487v * Mikael Klärich 44213a * Linda Carlsson 45420m
- “Hi! Jan’s answering machine is broken.
This is his refrigerator. Please speak very slowly, and I’ll stick your message to myself with one of these magnets.”
Today, over 17 % of the Finns have an answering machine or voice mail service on their fixed line, and almost everyone on their mobile phone, but a negative trend is showing [Suo]. However, the service has been constantly developing. The objective of this project is to identify issues that can be further developed in order to introduce an even better voice mail service. The development ideas have been created in the project group primarily using the brain storming method.
Traditional answering machines are being overtaken by voice mail services, and the voice mail services are developing new features.
Many services can take messages when the line is busy, and some can tell the number from which the message was sent. There are advanced systems which can handle faxes and emails.
On the Finnish market, the following services are available for consumers:
Kotivastaaja
Televastaaja
050 Box
Vastaaja
Vastaaja
The greeting is always the same, regardless who is calling:
• The user can't customise the service and it is not possible to have individual greetings for specific callers.
• The same greeting is not relevant for all callers.
• For example, it would be nice to greet your mother, wife, boss and mother in law with different messages.
Using the current services in a mobile environment is difficult, because your visual attention is needed simultaneously with following the services instructions.
The user interface is always audial, although the terminal provides other ways of receiving the message.
Messages can't be filed and sorted and managing them is usually difficult.
The current services are not usable for disabled people, deaf or elderly.
A solution to the first problem is a voice mail, in which it is possible for the user to record different greetings for different callers. The callers are identified by their number, after which their specific message is played to them. One message can be defined for several callers. For example, you can greet all your friends with the same message.
The voice mail also has a default message stored, which is played for callers with undefined numbers.
This kind of service also makes it possible for the user to use his voice mail to inform specific callers about some urgent matters. You can for instance record a message to your tennis partner, which informs him of some changes in your reservations.
Messages, which only are in audial form, are difficult to manage. A specific message is hard to find when you have dozens of messages in your voice mail. In fact, it makes no sense to save messages only in audial form.
The voice mail would be much more attractive, if messages also could be presented in textual for. This feature requires conversion from speech to text. The voice recognition, which would play an important role in the technical implementation of the conversionfeature, is already extensively studied.
The textual form supports the short time memory and the messages can be managed easier.[SaP99]
The messages can be sorted to different folders and used later on; this opens a whole new field of applications.
The messages can be managed with current WAP-phones; the WAP technology opens possibilities to sort, delete and select messages.
23.10.99 15:18 Wife :
Come home now !
23.10.99 18:17 Ken:
I can' t come tomor…
23.10.99 20.17 Mother:
You haven't call for …
24.10.99 07:37 Boss:
Remember the meeting..
LISTEN DELETE
SELECT
It is important for the voice mail designer to determine in what way the user would want to manage the service in different situations. [Mdu92]
A solution to the problem that the user needs visual contact with his phone when following the voice mail instructions, for example pressing different numbers, is a voice guided service. Due to this feature the user can keep his eyes on the road when driving and listening to his messages at the same time.
One can also imagine that a person with a strong farsighted vision prefers a voice guided voice mail.
[TJo99] This is also the case for auditory people.
References
[Mdu92] Multimedia User Interface Design Guidelines. http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/mime/papers/multiTR.html
[TJo99] The Joy of Visual Perception. http://www.yorku.ca/eye/thejoy.htm
[SaP99] Sensation and Perception,Goldstein, B.
[DoP99]Demo of Portico,http://www.genmagic.com/portico/portico_home.shtml
[Suo] Suomalaiset ja tuleva tietoyhteiskunta. www.vn.fi/vn/vm/kehittaminen
/tietoyhteiskunnan_kehittaminen/tyk/n062.htm.
Voice mail seems like a very simple and extensively studied subject, but new technologies are opening new possibilities. Voice mail is now starving; e-mail,
SMS and cellular phones are now hot topics. However, talking is a natural communication method for us.
The technologies are more and more integrated; voice, text, picture and video are processed in the same applications. .[DoP99] The telecom world and the
Internet are converging.
This will give voice mail a new and better life. Voice mail facilitates the communication and gives a freedom of time and place for the receiver; it allows the user again -after few years - to not answer to all incoming messages at once.
- “Hi, I’m probably home, I'm just avoiding someone I don't like.
Leave me a message, and if I don't call back, -
it's you.”