Newsletter 
Point/Counter Point on Personas
by Deborah Dahl
Deborah Dahl is a consultant in speech and natural language technologies and their application to business solutions, with over 20 years of experience. Dahl is also involved in speech and multimodal standards, serving as the chair of the W3C’s Mutlimodal Interaction Working Group. She is the editor of the recent book, “Practical Spoken Dialog Systems.”
A good voice user interface (VUI) is central to any successful speech application. Although VUI’s are made up of many components, if the persona is very memorable, users’ perceptions of it can dominate their opinions about the entire system, overwhelming all other aspects of the system in the users’ minds. As such, a good or bad persona can have major consequences for the success of a system.
I’ve posed some questions about personas to a panel of five distinguished VUI designers — Bruce Balentine of EIG; Melissa Dougherty and Wally Brill of Voice Partners; Blade Kotelly of Edify; and Walter Rolandi of The Voice User Interface Company. Their responses give a good perspective on current thinking about personas.`
About Personas
How do you define "persona" as used in speech applications?
Bruce Balentine: I see the word being used in two ways. First, as a generic term for those human-like characteristics that emerge spontaneously from application behaviors. The second use is more specific, and refers to a design philosophy. In this usage, some designers explicitly consider personality characteristics and biography as a formal part of the specification and design of dialogues.
Melissa Dougherty/Wally Brill: Persona is the consistent character of the voice interaction—and every system has one, whether it was pro-actively designed, or an accidental result. Extensive academic and commercial usability research has shown that callers take away a perception of a person behind the voice, every time they hear one.
Blade Kotelly: A speech application's persona includes personality traits a caller might attribute to that system after interacting with it. A persona heavily influences a caller's emotional reaction. Some designers who have trouble envisioning how those few elements can be used to create a multitude of personalities will go so far as to ascribe the speech persona a job, children, and hobbies.
Walter Rolandi: In the context of a voice user interface, a persona is the personality of the application: it is the epiphenomenon of voice talent variables such as gender and pitch; speaking variables such as intonation, pace and warmth; and prompt variables such as content and length. Unfortunately, in the speech industry, the term has come to connote entertainment-oriented and excessively animated voice user interfaces.
Do all speech applications have personas?
Balentine: All speech applications have personas according to my first generic usage. As soon as a machine presents voice cues to a user — and the user in turn gives voice responses in reply — an anthropomorphic model appears. The second more specific usage of persona does not apply to all applications. An explicit attempt to specify the anthropomorphic character — sort of "designing a person from the outside in" — is only one of several ways that designers can approach user interface design.
Kotelly: Yes, whether it's carefully crafted or not, speech applications always have a persona – there is always some human quality you can (and will) ascribe to it. It's the same for real people — no one is devoid of personality, rather they might be deemed "dull" or "apathetic.”
Rolandi: In a sense, yes. A persona will emerge whether by accident or by design. For example, even if it were the expressed intent of a designer to create an application devoid of a persona, one would still emerge. Just as people attribute personality characteristics to pets, users would eventually attribute personality characteristics to the application.
How have personas evolved in the past five years?
Dougherty/ Brill: In our business, personas have evolved considerably. We often test alternative personas to identify the one that best “fits” the brand, caller group and task. We have understood the value of multiple personas—not as a gimmick, but to create a sense that the speech system isn’t just impersonal automation, or to convey different aspects of the brand value to different customer segments. We’re deploying Hispanic, Spanish-speaking personas, designed and tested among that audience—not just translated from an English language deployment. As mobile commerce takes off, we’re also seeing personas that are more a part of a richer, entertainment experience in applications selling ringtones or music, for example.
Kotelly: The fact that designers focus on and sell the art of creating personas is an evolution in itself. Five years ago, only a few designers spent time and effort on creating a persona as part of their application design. Now, it's expected that any respected design organization will focus on extending a company's brand by crafting a suitable persona for their speech application.
Read the entire article online at Speech Technology Magazine >>
