TY  - JOUR
AB  - In this paper, we present the results of our long-term study on use of a voiceassistant (Amazon Alexa via Amazon Echo Dot) in nine families with children andno previous experience with this technology. The study was conducted over thecourse of 5 weeks during which the families could interact with the device freely.Three house visits were made to collect empirical data from the adult participantsin form of questionnaires. Additionally, conversational data from log files of the voiceassistant were obtained. These data were annotated and analyzed with a focus oncommunication breakdowns during human-assistant interaction. We investigate userbehavior for both adults and children in such situations, its reasons and consequencesfor user satisfaction. This article provides qualitative analysis of three particularlyinteresting breakdown cases, as well as statistical analysis along several hypothesesand research questions combining empirical and conversational data. Described casesof communication breakdown illustrate findings from existing literature on the topic.The statistical analysis paints a mixed picture, however, it helped us identify furtheravenues for research, some of which can be explored with our data set in the future.We found a significant negative effect of the number of abandoned failed requestson user satisfaction, contrary to the number of successfully repaired requests thathad no influence on user satisfaction. We discovered that users are more inclinedto use reformulation as repair strategy when they do not perceive the emergence ofmiscommunication as their fault. We could not identify a significant effect of internalreasons for the choice of other strategies, so we suggest that situational cluessuch as the immediate response of the voice assistant are more important for thechoice of repair strategy. Our results also hint that users distinguish between repairstrategies differently, as the self-perceived frequency of repetitions and abortions ofrequests were found to be positive predictors for the use of reformulation-basedstrategies. With regards to the long-term aspect of the study, use of repetition as a repair strategy by both children and adults significantly decreased with time, noother changes were found for other strategies. Additionally, no significant impact of ageon the choice of repair strategy was found, as well as no interaction effect betweenage and time.
DA  - 2022
DO  - 10.3389/fcomp.2022.791704
KW  - voice assistants
KW  - conversation analysis
KW  - miscommunication
KW  - communication breakdowns
KW  - human-machine interaction
KW  - repair strategies
LA  - eng
M2  - 791704
PY  - 2022
SP  - 791704-
T2  - Frontiers in Computer Science
TI  - "Alexa, you're really stupid": A Longitudinal Field Study on Communication Breakdowns between Family Members and a Voice Assistant
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-29606723
Y2  - 2024-11-22T00:25:49
ER  -