Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural Sensitivity
Katie Seaborn Yuto Sawa Mizuki Watanabe
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.