Why voice
Speech was faster than keyboard entry in English and Mandarin on phones (Ruan et al., 2018), and it helps when hands are busy. Expectations often exceed reality (Luger & Sellen, 2016), so show example phrases.
Showing the listening state
Make listening obvious (Apple, n.d.), e.g., a waveform microinteraction. Web Speech and SpeechRecognizer provide interim results (MDN, n.d.; Android Developers, n.d.) for live text. Auto-stop at silence and offer a stop button.
Correction, noise and alternatives
Let users edit results and undo errors. Voice happens amid conversation (Porcheron et al., 2018); noisy or quiet places favor keyboards. Keep voice optional, ensure all functions work otherwise per WCAG 2.2 (W3C, 2023) 2.1.1, and request the mic on first tap.
FAQ
- Where does voice input fit?
- Search, messages and notes, or hands-busy moments.
- What if recognition fails?
- Allow instant editing or retrying, with keyboard always available.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-27
References
- MDN Web Docs. (n.d.). Web Speech API. Interim results and errors.
- Android Developers. (n.d.). SpeechRecognizer. Listening state callbacks.
- Ruan, S., Wobbrock, J. O., Liou, K., Ng, A., & Landay, J. A. (2018). Comparing speech and keyboard text entry for short messages in two languages on touchscreen phones. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 1(4), Article 159. Speech beats typing for speed.
- Porcheron, M., Fischer, J. E., Reeves, S., & Sharples, S. (2018). Voice interfaces in everyday life. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–12). ACM. Voice in social settings.
- Luger, E., & Sellen, A. (2016). "Like having a really bad PA": The gulf between user expectation and experience of conversational agents. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 5286–5297). ACM. Expectation gap.
- Apple. (n.d.). Feedback. Human Interface Guidelines. Communicate status.
- World Wide Web Consortium. (2023). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. Criterion 2.1.1 keyboard.