Grounding is a type of error handling used during the interaction with an interactive system where the system tells the user its state. This can be conveyed with a simple sound, some image or a phrase.
It can be used to tell that it’s ready for the interaction; tell that something went wrong (and possibly what went wrong); and tell what the system aknowledged about the provided information.
A type of grounding in a voice interaction system can be:
- User: How high is the Eiffel Tower?
- System: The Eiffel Tower is 330 meters high.
In this way the system let the user know that it has actually understand what the subject of the question was, and avoids pieces of conversations where the system needs to double check some information by asking them to the user, expecting a yes or no type of response. This technique potentially enables to avoid the gulf of execution.
Another example of grounding is the progress bar, since it’s useful to easily communicate the system state to the user. Without a progress bar, the user won’t know if the task is really being executed or if the computer froze.
tags: hci