Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), like Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our daily lives. VUIs are typically marketed as “personal assistants” or “butlers” meant to make lives easier for their users. In our research, we find that in addition to the “assistant” or “butler” metaphors, there are numerous other metaphors people use for VUIs—knowingly or unknowingly. These metaphors form the basis of users’ understanding of VUIs and set the tone for all future interactions. We survey a range of metaphors from various research articles used by users, designers, researchers, and manufacturers of VUIs to help us understand and learn how people perceive and interact with VUIs. We find that metaphor usage in the context of VUIs is messy—it may be explicit or implicit, helpful or offensive, and can change over time. Metaphor analysis could help reveal the difficulties people have in interacting with VUIs and facilitate complex discussions about sociotechnical issues pertaining to VUIs.
Publisher
2021 Research Showcase at the School of Information Sciences
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
