Active progress bars : aiding the switch to temporary activities

International audienceCan we design an interface to help people make use of the idle time spent looking at progress bars? We propose to augment progress bars with user-controlled functionalities facilitating the switch to temporary activities. We propose a taxonomy of waiting period contexts and possible temporary tasks, then report on participatory design sessions, and a follow-up survey. Finally we describe an early prototype of active progress bar and report a small controlled experiment used to identify the impact of the tool on primary task satisfaction. The findings suggest that Active Progress Bars lead to significantly higher satisfaction when compared to a control condition

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

International audienceThis 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