Engaging Younger Audiences with Voice: New Opportunities to Connect with a Younger Demographic
By and large, the younger generation is keen to try out new technologies. And voice user interfaces have not veered from the trend.
Research by PwC shows that users aged between 18 and 24 are adopting the voice assistant technology faster than older users.
The twist, however, is that while the younger demographic is quick to try the tech, their usage falls below that of their older counterparts. For those who build voice assistants, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
What’s causing a large chunk of younger audiences to lose interest in voice AI after testing it?
And if those issues are addressed, how can they impact the various voice AI use cases?
Why It’s Important for Voice UIs to Connect With Younger Audiences
Teenagers are some of the heaviest users of the internet. Naturally, this means that they offer the greatest potential user base for voice AI, especially if their present usage can be adapted to accommodate voice.
To get more specific, teenagers access the internet on their mobiles more frequently than any other demographic. And, excitingly for conversational AI designers, use of voice assistants is highest for mobile devices, beating smart speakers, IoT-enabled appliances, cars, etc.
The intersection of teenage mobile internet use and dominance of mobile voice AIs emphasizes the expansion potential.
An enlarged and engaged user base carries other benefits. For those building voice AIs, it means access to a larger pool of data. And that can be used for refining the voice assistant, improving user experience, and tightening security.
And, crucially, the most dominant use cases of voice user interfaces, mainly questions and music, are those that are in line with teenage interests. That means there are opportunities to increase use by younger audiences through simply optimizing voice AIs for use cases that are clearly laid out.
Going back further than the teenage and preteen years, voice assistants are at a distinct advantage with kids still learning to read and spell. Research shows that by the time they acquire literacy, they’re already familiar with touch-based interfaces.
But voice interfaces are just as easy for children to use and understand. Plus, allowing them to get comfortable with voice AI while young improves the chances that they’ll use it even as they learn other input methods.
Making Voice AIs More Appealing to Younger Audiences
One of the most effective ways of getting younger audiences more interested in voice AIs is tailoring them to the audiences’ existing habits.
For example, Google once conducted a survey that revealed that 20% of voice searches by teenagers were to check for available movie tickets and prices. Such high-volume search criteria provide an opportunity to offer utility that keeps young users engaged.
They also offer points at which conversation designers can redirect users to further applications, helping them to explore voice AIs more.
Even more interesting, the same Google survey showed that 51% of young users would want voice assistants to be able to help them locate the remote. While that’s a narrow and limited use case, it provides insight into the functionality young users are seeking.
They’d like voice assistants that take advantage of the interconnectedness that’s offered by the Internet of Things.
And there are clues to be found in the ways teenagers are spending time online. As far as social media, Statista reports that 34% of US teens cite Snapchat as their favorite. TikTok follows at 29%.
Conversation designers can reflect this by designing their apps to have seamless integration with these apps. This is in line with research that shows that 50% of voice AI users want apps to be navigable by voice.
Design-centered Optimizations
There are improvements that can be made from a conversation design perspective. And these are mostly focused on making the voice AIs better able to understand queries and commands given by younger audiences.
There are language differences that are vast enough to affect performance across different age-based demographics. Truman State University notes the distinct elements of the speech teenagers use.
For one, it’s more likely to contain emotive words, as well as markers of attitude and involvement. Conversation designers can pay more attention to making voice AIs less prone to being thrown off by these elements, or even able to use them to gain greater clarity on a user’s intent.
That can make for a smoother and more natural user experience that keeps younger audiences engaged.
Productivity Voice AIs for Younger Audiences
Conversational AI is finding wide application as a productivity tool. An example is JiLL, a voice assistant launched by property development firm JLL to help employees set meetings, book conference rooms, and more.
Similarly, there’s Amazon Alexa for Business and Einstein from Salesforce.
That productivity-based approach can make its way to voice assistants designed for younger audiences, enabling new use cases. And these can be as varied as helping with scheduling, providing homework assistance and allowing for self-quizzing.
The same fundamental of cutting down monotonous tasks that’s seen in the voice AIs designed for older demographics can be carried over.
Conversation designers can also promote learning-based adoption for children not yet at literacy level. Their comfort with voice user interfaces will likely continue through their older days.
For users at this stage, the approach differs from what’s required when designing voice assistants for other age groups. The main factor for maintaining engagement at this age group is for the AI to display a capacity for real-time learning.
The overarching idea is that voice AI is able to play a prominent role at various stages of education. Many of the design principles used in professional productivity apps are applicable for this purpose.
Pearson has explored this idea in-depth, shedding light on how voice assistants and AI in general are uniquely able to produce great results for both deep learning and reinforcement learning.
Younger demographics can benefit from adopting voice assistants more widely. But, on the part of conversation designers, that requires creating new applications and feature sets that cater to the needs of this specific segment. The advantages are far-reaching, encompassing both leisurely applications and productive, educational activities to facilitate improved outcomes.
About Digital Assistant Academy
Digital Assistant Academy provides Voice Interaction Design and Conversation Design training and Certification. In this program, we will take you from the very basics of voice interaction and conversation design, through to how voice technologies work. We’ll do a deep-dive into conversation design strategy, and it will be fully hands-on with your Capstone projects. By the end of the course, you will have two voice applications successfully designed, developed, and deployed. Learn more at Digital Assistant Academy https://www.digitalassistant.academy/
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