Manipulating synthetic voice parameters for navigation in hierarchical structures

Abstract

Auditory interfaces commonly use synthetic speech for conveying information. In many instances the information being conveyed is hierarchically structured, such as menus. In this paper, we describe the results of one experiment that was designed to investigate the use of multiple synthetic voices for representing hierarchical information. A hierarchy of 27 nodes was created (in which 2 of the nodes were not shown to the participants during the training session). A between subjects design (N-16) was conducted to evaluate the effect of multiple synthetic voices on recall rates. Two different forms of training were provided. Participant's tasks involved identifying the position of nodes in the hierarchy by listening to the synthetic voice. The results suggest that 84.38% of the participants recalled the position of the nodes accurately. The results also indicate that multiple synthetic voices can be used to facilitate navigation hierarchies. Overall, this study suggests that it is possible to use synthetic voices to represent hierarchies.