Relief from the Audio Interface Blues: Expanding the Spectrum of Menu, List, and Form Styles

Menus, lists, and forms are the workhorse dialogue structures in telephone-based interactive voice response applications. Despite diversity in applications, there is a surprising homogeneity in the menu, list, and form styles commonly employed. There are, however, many alternatives, and no single style fits every prospective application and user population. A design space for each dialogue structure organizes the alternatives and provides a framework for analyzing their benefits and drawbacks. In addition to phone based interactions, the design spaces apply to any limited bandwidth, temporally constrained display devices, including small screen devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and screen phones.