Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural Sensitivity
Katie Seaborn, Yuto Sawa, Mizuki Watanabe · Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies · 2024
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.