Touchtone and Speech Interfacing to a System, which one to choose

Using an automated service to access information via §telephone has become an important productivity §enhancer. However, such automated services are §generally inaccessible to users who have had little §technological exposure. There has been a belief that §speech recognition technology can be used to bridge §this gap, but little objective evidence for this §belief has been produced. To adress this situation, §two interfaces, touchtone and speech-based, were §designed, implemented and compared as input §modalities to a system that provide the said users §with access to an §informational/transactional service. The speech-§based interface was found to outperform the §touchtone interface in terms of completion rate, §error rate and user satisfaction. The data obtained §on time taken to complete tasks could not be §compated as the touchtone interface data was highly §influenced by people who did not fall in the §category of the users under consideration. These §results serve to confirm that speech-based §interfaces are more effective and more satisfying §and can therefore enhance information dissemination §to people who are not well exposed to the technology