The Impact of Voice Design on User Perception: A Case Study of Campus Counseling Voice Services

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, voice AI was applied in various fields because of its ability to simulate human voice dialogue. In Taiwan, the mental health of college students has received increasing attention, but campus counseling is rarely studied. Therefore, this study is based on Kansei Engineering and aims to explore the impact of voice characteristics on users ‘perceptions to guide the development of campus consultation voice AI services. This study was designed for four experimental conditions: voice gender (male, female) and pitch (high-pitch, low-pitch). Participants evaluated the sample’s likeability and perceived safety through an online questionnaire. Sixty-eight questionnaires were collected. The results show that voice gender and pitch significantly impact participant’s perception. Male voices and higher pitches increase likeability and perceived safety; gender significantly impacts likeability and perceived safety; pitch has a more substantial effect on likeability and less on perceived safety. This study provides a direction for developing campus counseling voice design. It is recommended that future developers should choose male voices to improve users’ favorability and sense of security. At the same time, the acceptance of voice AI by different groups of people and the relationship between voice features and context can be further studied to improve the effectiveness and reliability of services.