Usability assessment of text-to-speech synthesis for additional detail in an automated telephone banking system

Abstract

This paper describes a comprehensive usability evaluation of an automated telephone banking system which employs text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis in offering additional detail on customers' account transactions. The paper describes a series of four experiments in which TTS was employed to offer an extra level of detail to recent transactions listings within an established banking service which otherwise uses recorded speech from a professional recording artist. Results from the experiments show that participants welcome the added value of TTS in being able to provide additional detail on their account transactions, but that TTS should be used minimally in the service.

Evaluating synthetic speech in an Irish CALL application: influences of predisposition and of the holistic environment

“…This effectively means that as one's judgment of the synthetic speech is influenced by the context in which it arises, the acceptability of synthetic speech in CALL platforms is likely to be highly conditional on the overall quality of those platforms. Morton et al [15] found that people accepted synthetic voices when accessing their bank accounts because they felt no human was involved, something that afforded them greater privacy. For information-giving activities a very different finding has been reported, and human voices were found to be preferable [16].…”