We conducted a systematic literature review of the human factors literature at the intersection of voice user interfaces (VUI) and older adults among Human Factors publications. Our review was limited to research published in the past 50 years (1970 – 2020) in either the journal Human Factors or the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. While we included a broad array of search terms related to VUIs, we found very few articles about VUIs that were specifically focused on designing for older adults or used older adults as participants in studies. Of the 26 human factors publications we did find that were related to this topic, most found older adults take more time to operate VUIs and/or made more errors than younger adults, whereas a minority of publications found no age-related differences. We concluded that age-related differences in the use of VUIs are likely task specific.
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