Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural Sensitivity

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Seaborn, Katie, Sawa, Yuto, Watanabe, Mizuki
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Seaborn, Katie
Sawa, Yuto
Watanabe, Mizuki
author_facet Seaborn, Katie
Sawa, Yuto
Watanabe, Mizuki
contents Voice assistants (VAs) are becoming a feature of our everyday life. Yet, the user experience (UX) is often limited, leading to underuse, disengagement, and abandonment. Co-designing interactions for VAs with potential end-users can be useful. Crowdsourcing this process online and anonymously may add value. However, most work has been done in the English-speaking West on dialogue data sets. We must be sensitive to cultural differences in language, social interactions, and attitudes towards technology. Our aims were to explore the value of co-designing VAs in the non-Western context of Japan and demonstrate the necessity of cultural sensitivity. We conducted an online elicitation study (N = 135) where Americans (n = 64) and Japanese people (n = 71) imagined dialogues (N = 282) and activities (N = 73) with future VAs. We discuss the implications for coimagining interactions with future VAs, offer design guidelines for the Japanese and English-speaking US contexts, and suggest opportunities for cultural plurality in VA design and scholarship.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_17599
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural Sensitivity
Seaborn, Katie
Sawa, Yuto
Watanabe, Mizuki
Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
Voice assistants (VAs) are becoming a feature of our everyday life. Yet, the user experience (UX) is often limited, leading to underuse, disengagement, and abandonment. Co-designing interactions for VAs with potential end-users can be useful. Crowdsourcing this process online and anonymously may add value. However, most work has been done in the English-speaking West on dialogue data sets. We must be sensitive to cultural differences in language, social interactions, and attitudes towards technology. Our aims were to explore the value of co-designing VAs in the non-Western context of Japan and demonstrate the necessity of cultural sensitivity. We conducted an online elicitation study (N = 135) where Americans (n = 64) and Japanese people (n = 71) imagined dialogues (N = 282) and activities (N = 73) with future VAs. We discuss the implications for coimagining interactions with future VAs, offer design guidelines for the Japanese and English-speaking US contexts, and suggest opportunities for cultural plurality in VA design and scholarship.
title Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural Sensitivity
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17599