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Conference Paper/Proceeding/Abstract 758 views 1333 downloads

Voice Interfaces in Everyday Life

Martin Porcheron, Joel E. Fischer, Stuart Reeves, Sarah Sharples

Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Swansea University Author: Martin Porcheron

DOI (Published version): 10.1145/3173574.3174214

Abstract

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are becoming ubiquitously available, being embedded both into everyday mobility via smartphones, and into the life of the home via ‘assistant’ devices. Yet, exactly how users of such devices practically thread that use into their everyday social interactions remains unde...

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Published in: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
ISBN: 9781450356206
Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 2018
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa55707
Abstract: Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are becoming ubiquitously available, being embedded both into everyday mobility via smartphones, and into the life of the home via ‘assistant’ devices. Yet, exactly how users of such devices practically thread that use into their everyday social interactions remains underexplored. By collecting and studying audio data from month-long deployments of the Amazon Echo in participants’ homes—informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis—our study documents the methodical practices of VUI users, and how that use is accomplished in the complex social life of the home. Data we present shows how the device is made accountable to and embedded into conversational settings like family dinners where various simultaneous activities are being achieved. We discuss how the VUI is finely coordinated with the sequential organisation of talk. Finally, we locate implications for the accountability of VUI interaction, request and response design, and raise conceptual challenges to the notion of designing ‘conversational’ interfaces.
Keywords: Amazon Echo; conversational agent; conversational user interface; conversation analysis; intelligent personal assistants; ethnomethodology; collocated interaction
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering

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