Previous research has found that using a mobile phone while driving can be detrimental to driving performance. Voice dialling has the potential to reduce the interference between concurrent tasks of driving and phoning. A laboratory experiment was designed to test two variations of a speech interface against a standard manual interface. Forty-eight participants carried out driving-related tasks while simultaneously dialling familiar numbers. The speech interfaces significantly reduced both tracking error and the reaction time to peripheral targets, compared to the manual interface. Despite an increase in dialling transaction times, speech was preferred by users, and felt to be less demanding than manual control. The speech interface with visual plus auditory feedback of recognition results performed worse than the audio-only condition. The results are explained in terms of the physical and cognitive demands of phoning while driving, and have important implications for interface design. (Author/publisher).
Samenvatting