Paged readout needs a user-gated continue
Aliases: spoken page continue · still more · timeout-as-continue
What it is
The first three restaurants are read. The system waits two seconds and dumps four through ten. The passenger is asking about parking at number two; the user has not yet said “that one,” and the next seven are already washing the comparison out of the ear. User-gated spoken pagination keeps the continue on the listener’s side: after a page, whether to hear the next page is something they launch (“any more,” “next batch”), not something silence is taken to mean. It is about who presses continue between pages, not about “too many items should have been filtered first.”
Why it happens
At the end of a page the listener is usually using the channel for something else: comparing two items still in working memory, conferring with someone beside them, preparing to name a choice. Silence here is not “I want more”; it is decision occupancy. Timeout-continue treats that occupancy as idle and overwrites a choice that has not been submitted. A user-gated continue leaves initiative with the listener: more only if they ask; otherwise they name or leave on the current page.
Auto-continue has a false friendliness: it looks like “we gave you everything.” For audition, the next page is not a supplement; it is an erase of the previous page’s buffer. The continue prompt must be short and expected (“three more — hear them?”) and must actually wait. A prompt that then rolls on by itself is only a timeout wrapped in a question.
Studying it
The same long list, three or four items a page. Conditions: timeout continue, ask and wait, neither ask nor continue until the user names or requests the next page. Dependent measures: correct selection on the current page, whether the user was talking to someone beside them when continue started, choices washed out, and whether “stop” barge-ins land on page boundaries or mid-page. Independent variables: page length, timeout, presence of an inter-page question.
In the wild, align page-boundary timestamps with user onset. If many selections occur after the next page has started and the selected object belongs to the previous page, continue is stealing the decision window. Labs that forbid talking to a neighbour underestimate real occupancy and overrate auto-continue.
Where it stops holding
“Read the rest” is an explicit grant; continue after that is not a timeout guess. A single page with nothing behind it has no continue to offer — do not ask “any more” into empty space. Emergency lists (exits, recall lots) may have to run without a decision window — a safety exception, not a licence for restaurant timeout-continue. When a screen is present and gaze is on it, the visual list already says “more below” and speech can skip paging; the moment gaze leaves, spoken continue-rights come back.
Applying it
- At the end of a page, stay on that page and hand over continue with one short question (“four more — hear them?”). Do not start the next page without “yes / next / any more.”
- Treat silence as “still choosing,” not as “continue.” If a timeout fires, ask again or stop; do not resume readout.
- “Stop,” “the second one,” and “change the filter” outrank continue on every page; selecting an item on the current page cancels unplayed pages.
- How to check: in a walkthrough, plant a confer-with-neighbour beat after page one. If the system starts page two during that beat and the user picks an item from page one, continue is not in their hands.