ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the analysis of an interactive voice response (IVR) for the technical support line of a professional accounting software application, the redesign of the IVR and the outcome of the redesign. The IVR prompts and menu structure were evaluated using two sets of heuristics. One set, developed by Nielsen and Molich and Nielsen, has been widely used in evaluations of desktop and web-based software user interfaces. Prompts and menu structures were subjected to a heuristic evaluation, a relatively inexpensive usability evaluation method whereby a practitioner or several practitioners examine a user interface and determine its conformance to established usability principles. A set of heuristics specific to voice-user interfaces was developed by Hura, based upon the results of usability tests with IVRs and speech recognition applications. They overlap somewhat with Nielsen's heuristics, but they provide distinct utility for evaluations of voice-user interfaces, particularly speech-recognition applications.
