Presenting Web Search Results over a Speech-Only Channel with Minimal Cognitive Load

Abstract

While voice assistants have exploded in popularityover the last decade, they still have many issues.Among these is the issue of result presentation:how do you speak results to the user? Priorresearch has investigated how cognitive loadrelates to result presentation and other methodsfor result presentation, but highlighted a lackof research about result presentation over speechand called for further investigation. [12] Thisresearch answered that call, and investigated the research question How can web search results bepresented over a speech-only channel such thatthe users’ cognitive load is minimized?Wetested three methods: 1) one-source, one-shotresponses, 2) question-and-answer responses, and3) multi-source, one-shot responses. In all cases,single-source responses were preferred to multi-source responses. Of the two types of single-source responses tested (question-and-answer styleresponses and one-shot responses), both types hada similar average score. Our recommendationto developers of conversational search technologywould be to allow user choice between these tworesponse types. We would only recommend multi-source responses as a fall-back option in the caseof a low estimated probability of result relevance.