Voice familiarity in an interactive voice-reminders app for elderly care recipients and their family caregivers

This thesis focuses on the effect of voice familiarity in voice reminders between elders and their caregivers. An interactive voice application (for desktops and  smartphones) was created to study these effects. Past work suggests voice familiarity may contribute to higher understanding from the listener and may help boost physical and audiovisual deficiencies [1, 2]. Therein for this study, 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 found that care dyads prefer familiar voice reminders for routine tasks (like taking medication) and generally find caregiver-voiced reminders to be acceptable, while medical care providers have mixed opinions about older adults using recorded reminders.