Voice Familiarity in a Voice-Reminders App for Elderly Care Recipients and Their Family Caregivers

This work focuses on the effect of voice familiarity in voice reminders between elders and their caregivers. A voice application (for desktops and smartphones) was created to study these effects. Seniors, and their family care providers along with medical providers were consulted for voice application design and improvement opportunities using two user tests with 17 care dyads and 15 medical care providers. Results from qualitative content analysis show that care dyads generally prefer familiar voice reminders for routine tasks (such as taking medication) and generally find caregiver-voiced reminders to be acceptable, while medical care providers have mixed opinions about older adults using recorded reminders.