The Cost of Turning Heads: A Comparison of a Head-Worn Display to a Smartphone for Supporting Persons with Aphasia in Conversation

Abstract

Current symbol-based dictionaries providing vocabulary support for persons with the language disorder, aphasia, are housed on smartphones or other portable devices. To employ the support on these external devices requires the user to divert their attention away from their conversation partner, to the neglect of conversation dynamics like eye contact or verbal inflection. A prior study investigated head-worn displays (HWDs) as an alternative form factor for supporting glanceable, unobtrusive, and always-available conversation support, but it did not directly compare the HWD to a control condition. To address this limitation, we compared vocabulary support on a HWD to equivalent support on a smartphone in terms of overall experience, perceived focus, and conversational success. Lastly, we elicited critical discussion of how each device might be better designed for conversation support. Our work contributes (1) evidence that a HWD can support more efficient communication, (2) preliminary results that a HWD can provide a better overall experience using assistive vocabulary, and (3) a characterization of the design features persons with aphasia value in portable conversation support technologies. Our findings should motivate further work on head-worn conversation support for persons with aphasia.