Nass Standford Conference

Nass Human Computer Interaction
Video Critique

In his conference, Cliff Nass presents information regarding how people interact with voice-technologies. He provides experimental data andanecdotes considering how people respond to voices and emotions coming from a system. This information is relevant not only to the field of human-computer interaction, but also designers and marketers,schools and government. Even though, technology advances rapidly, the way in which humans understand each other has not changed that much. Nass argues that people are predisposed to both listen and speak,suggesting that speech is something very natural and inherent to every human being. New technologies should take into consideration these social rules in order to develop more efficient interfaces.Nass also presents information and anecdotes about gender and gender stereotypes as well as voice emotion and politeness. For instance, modest voices are perceived as nice and friendly, while criticalvoices are their exact opposite, but the latter are also seen as more intelligent. Nass would argue that users tend to prefer a voice that is similar to theirs. Nevertheless, it would also beinteresting to know when people might prefer something that is different from their personality. Another example presented by Nass is the BMW GPS female voice. He says that male customers in Germany did notlike the system’s voice simply because it was a “woman.” This provides further evidence that people tend to judge and accept or reject technologies based on social cues. Hence, changing the pitch in avoice could cause great impact on user’s attitudes towards the product, service or media.
I really enjoyed the conference and I believe that much of the points made by Nass are true to some extent.Nevertheless, I think that the role of community and culture is missing in this conversation. I know that it would be really hard to standardize these findings all over the world but still these...