A Framework to Enhance User Experience of Older Adults With Speech-Based Intelligent Personal Assistants

Speech-based intelligent personal assistants (sIPAs) promise to improve quality of life in older adults, but they pose various usability barriers that limit their adoption by older adults. We conducted a semi-structured interview study with fourteen older adults to understand their experiences with these devices. The collected data were analyzed using inductive and deductive coding, resulting in the identification of two broad themes: usage of sIPA and concerns regarding sIPA. “Usage of sIPA” highlights different ways in which participants were currently using and wanted to use their sIPAs in the future. “Concerns regarding sIPA” explains different types of usability challenges that participants were facing with these devices. Based on our findings, we suggest that sIPAs for older adults should focus on privacy improvements, interpersonal skills and contextual awareness. In addition, we provide practical suggestions for implementing permission-based data storage, explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) principles, dialect and accent recognition, and humanized communication behaviors within sIPAs. This research provides both design and implementation directions to accelerate improvements in sIPAs aimed at older adults.