Case Study of Conversational UI ②

Using VUI to Support the Life of the Visually Impaired

Conversational UI is expected to support the lives of visually impaired and physically handicapped persons, as well as persons with intellectual disabilities and the elderly, as a means of interaction.

According to Alisha Pradhan and colleagues' study on the use of smart speakers for people with disabilities, it has been shown that blind and physically handicapped individuals can use a variety of aspects, including supporting independent behavior, supporting memory, improving efficiency and safety.

However, these devices and services are designed for general users and are not considered products for the physically handicapped or the elderly.

This service is an AI assistant service that can be used by healthy and visually impaired persons to provide a series of services such as flight information at the airport, ticket purchase, check-in, navigation within the airport, and transfer booking.

This service system consists of a CUI for airport devices and an AI assistant for smartphones, and a cloud for processing airport information and passenger data. The services provided differ depending on the terminal (airport equipment / smartphone). Screen operation and voice operation are also possible, and a visually impaired person can operate by voice, and a healthy person can operate by screen or voice according to the situation.

Quantitative research
to understand the current situation of the Visually Impaired


Survey target
40 visually impaired People

Result

• Acquired disorders are the most common.
• Among the respondents, first-class visually impaired make up 72.5%.
• 97.5% of visually impaired people go out monthly and weekly. 70% of them go out alone.
• 75% go out by train or bullet train.
• 85% have experience traveling in Japan and 27.5% have experience traveling abroad.
• Digital device usage is high.

Two prototypes of the assistant app and the check-in device were tested by two visually impaired user¹ to perform a user test and evaluation.

As in Case ①, using the Likert scale, qualitative questions were asked in five stages from "very agreeable" to "disagree at all" and asked to be evaluated.

1.two visually impaired user:
a college student with first-grade disability,  and a housewife with a first-grade disability.

How to improve VUI conversations for the visually impaired?

Conclusion

This study examines the possibility of the public service area of the visually impaired person of the conversational UI, and can propose the design according to the approach, and can contribute to the utilization of the conversational UI in the future.
Furthermore, from the viewpoint of inclusive design, we have tried to design a conversational UI, which will contribute to developing services for the visually impaired in the future. And this design approach was found to be effective.

In the future, from the inclusive perspective, we will examine and expand on the verification and supplementation of interactive UI design methods based on other cases, and the effectiveness of sample conversation verification methods and test improvement methods.

And the evolution of technologies such as voice technology and AI can dramatically change society and give people convenience, while people with disabilities and the elderly can become unfamiliar with the change and become more inconvenient. At that time, the role of the designer should be reconsidered. Only inclusive perspectives can provide valuable value to disabled and elderly people with the power of technology.