Article by Kocielnik et al. (2018)
Modern technologies allow people to collect a lot of data about their activities, for example, distance traveled and similar information. However, a gap remains in analyzing and using this data for personal learning. Therefore, it is necessary to involve users in reflection, which expands self-knowledge, improves goal setting and self-control in correcting behavior. Existing capabilities as diaries in applications imply that reflection will occur on its own after the data collected is provided. However, conversations can better trigger thinking, and in the context of technologies – mini-dialogues. Kocielnik et al. (2018) check how a dialogue system based on different levels of learning theory (Noticing, Understanding, and Future Actions) will help users reflect in fitness applications. To achieve their goal, they conducted several workshops and field deployment.
Creating dialogs to encourage reflection is a complex challenge for developers. Twelve people participated in the author’s workshops to make the reflective questions. They discussed reflection on their daily activity and proposed reflexive questions of three levels (Noticing, Understanding, and Future Actions) in three categories – personal goals, goals and personal data usage, other people’s goals, and data. In addition to generating 275 questions, the authors noted the limitations of existing systems that they seek to avoid – focus on notifications rather than reflection, boredom due to repetitions, demotivation, and platform inconvenience.
As a result, authors developed Reflection Companion implemented as a PHP server and working through SMS sent at a random time, controlled through the Twilio API. Moreover, they applied a two-step minidialogues structure, personalization, and daily reflection sessions to stimulate reflection. After field deployment, 19 people participated in interviews and praised the engagement, performance of the system, and reflection triggers. They noted an increase in awareness, an understanding of own actions, and motivation.
Article by Reddy et al., (2021)
Intellectual things are increasingly becoming part of people’s lives. Reddy et al. (2021) believe that consequently, a desire to talk with these things appears. At the moment, conversational agents (CA), such as Google Assistant, act as intermediaries for communication between people and things, but established programs limit such interactions. The authors applied a more-than-human approach, Thing Perspective exercise, and speculative Thing Interview to highlight the ways and themes in the relationship between people and things surrounding them. The authors endowed voices with several items from their daily use and conducted interviews speaking on their behalf. Determined topics can inspire the future development of things with conversational capabilities. After the interview, the authors reflected process and recorded fragments of the conversation, which they considered the most significant.
The topics that arose during the interview process form the basis of the article. The topic Breaking silences notes that things already communicate in a certain way with their owners, for example, the sounds of boiling for a kettle and a coffee maker, emphasizing that communication occurs not only through voice. This fact inspired the authors to reflect on the capabilities of CAs in the use of sounds, their amplification, and other aspects. Navigating proximity explores the relationship between an object’s place and its perception by a person; for example, the earpiece feels like part of the ear. The spatiality and distributing agency determines that things and people can have perceptual gaps; for instance, doors could know who knocks on them while a person does not know. Altered presence raises the question of how much things could judge and influence their owners.
The theme of Permanence/Impermanence inspired the authors to think about the memory and durability of CAs. Finally, World as perceived by the thing raises the question of how things could know the world around us. Thus, the authors shifted focus from how items with voice interfaces can be developed to the relationship between people and things during their research. However, the themes raised may be the basis of future research on the design of everyday items.
Article by Rogers et al., (2019)
Technology has significantly changed human lives, and there is debate about whether changes are positive or harmful. Rogers et al. (2019) explore the role of design research in protecting the positive effects of technology by focusing on voice-enabled Internet. Human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers and designers can play a significant role in presenting modern technologies to the public and in future interactions to regulate them. The authors’ goal is to create a design research film that will simultaneously explore opportunities and protect a healthy approach to creating voice-driven products.
At various stages of their work, the authors shared ideas, made a film to implement ideas, and evaluated its potential impact. The main themes that the authors wanted to emphasize are
- The consent model is dead: it draws attention to the problems of using any voice to activate devices.
- Visibility is at the crux of trust: it indicates the need to display processes in devices controlled by voice.
- Behind every object is an ideology: consumers should understand the ideologies behind the technology.
- Our bodies are our sensors: explores how the approach of technology to people will affect them.
Wanting to cover the themes, make films more entertaining, show the possibilities of artificial intelligence education, and demonstrate the importance of both trust in technology and media literacy, the authors created three concepts for films:
- Eddi is a voice assistant who learns from his owner.
- Karma is a voice assistant that uses personal data for calls on behalf of the owner.
- Sig is an assistant whose identity can be changed by the owner.
A film with plots based on these ideas was presented at the London Design Festival. Thus, through exciting content, the authors drew attention to some exciting problems related to the use of voice-controlled technologies. They also presented potential directions for technologies development that protect a healthier voice-enabled Internet approach.
References
Kocielnik, R., Xiao, L., Avrahami, D., & Hsieh, G. (2018). Reflection companion: a conversational system for engaging users in reflection on physical activity. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2(2), 1-26.
Reddy, A., Kocaballi, A. B., Nicenboim, I., Søndergaard, M. L. J., Lupetti, M. L., Key, C., Speed, C., Lockton, D., Giaccardi, E., Grommé, F., Robbins, H., Primlani, N., Yurman, P., Sumartojo, S., Phan, T., Bedö, V., & Strengers, Y. (2021). Making everyday things talk: Speculative conversations into the future of voice interfaces at home. Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-16.
Rogers, J., Clarke, L., Skelly, M., Taylor, N., Thomas, P., Thorne, M., Larsen, S., Odrozek, K., Kloiber, J., Bihr., P., Jain, A., Arden, J., & von Grafenstein, M. (2019). Our friends electric: Reflections on advocacy and design research for the voice enabled internet.Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-13.