A Comparison of Voice Controlled and Mouse Controlled Web Browsing (2000)

Voice controlled web browsers allow users to navigate by speaking the text of a link or an associated number instead of clicking with a mouse. One such browser is Conversa, by Conversational Computing. This within subjects study with 18 subjects compared voice browsing with traditional mouse-based browsing. It attempted to identify which of three common hypertext forms (linear slide show, grid/tiled map, and hierarchical menu) are well suited to voice navigation, and whether voice navigation is helped by numbering links. The study shows that voice control adds approximately 50 percent to the performance time for certain types of tasks. Subjective satisfaction measures indicate that for voice browsing, textual links are preferable to numbered links.