Avoiding mixed messages: research-based fact-checking the media portrayals of voice user interfaces for older adults

It is often suggested that older adults (those 60 years or older) constitute a viable target market for voice user interfaces (VUIs) and that VUIs can provide many benefits for older adults. The mass media has been found to support this view, based on recent investigation on mass media’s portrayals of VUIs for older adults (Sin, Munteanu et al., 2021). The mass media was also found to suggest that older adults’ perceptions, acceptance, and adoption of VUIs rest on issues of data privacy, trust in the organizations behind VUIs, life fit and benefits conferred by VUIs, and market and government actions. This messaging can directly and indirectly influence older adults’ perceptions, and subsequent adoption, of voice user interfaces (Boothroyd, 2014; Rogers, 2010), much in the way that mass media has influenced adoption of other technologies when they emerged, such as smartphones (Yoo et al., 2010) and television (Weber & Evans, 2002). However, it is not yet known to what degree the claims made by the mass media about VUIs are supported by current academic research. It is possible that the mass media is propagating claims about VUIs that are not supported by academic literature. This is important because discrepancies between media messaging and academic findings may highlight aspects related to VUI adoption that are either not yet investigated by academic research or are portrayed in the mass media in a manner not supported by (or even contradictory to) scientific knowledge. Shedding light upon these knowledge gaps and addressing them are vital steps for the design of VUI systems in a manner that is conscious of factors that can influence VUI adoption (herein referred to as ‘adoption factors’) and sociotechnical influences of adoption (such as mass media messaging). Failure to design in a manner that sufficiently accounts for adoption factors can result in older adults’ rejection of VUI systems and, perhaps, other forms of digital technology as well (Norman, 2013; Whitenton, 2018). Furthermore, unsubstantiated claims in mass media messaging may interplay with the commercial industry’s development of VUIs, which is not only progressing much faster than academic-based research but may also be moving in a different direction than academia (Murad et al., 2019). The vigorous mass media messaging and industry push for “voice-first” devices may cause VUIs, which are positioned as greatly benefiting older adults, to instead further marginalize them with design features that exacerbate feelings of frailty, social isolation, and loneliness (Sin, Franz et al., 2021; Sin & Munteanu, 2020). For our investigation, we adopt a sociotechnical perspective (as opposed to issues of engineering performance or accuracy) of VUIs for older adults. The study of technology as sociotechnical systems (i.e., as systems with technological, social, cultural, historical, economic, and political dimensions) accounts for forces external to the technology alone as drivers of technology design and development and emphasizes the role of humans in this process (Neves & Vetere, 2019). We