Examining Humanness as a Metaphor to Design Voice User Interfaces
<|reference_start|>Examining Humanness as a Metaphor to Design Voice User Interfaces: Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) increasingly leverage 'humanness' as a foundational design metaphor, adopting roles like 'assistants,' 'teachers,' and 'secretaries' to foster natural interactions. Yet, this approach can sometimes misalign user trust and reinforce societal stereotypes, leading to socio-technical challenges that might impede long-term engagement. This paper explores an alternative approach to navigate these challenges-incorporating non-human metaphors in VUI design. We report on a study with 240 participants examining the effects of human versus non-human metaphors on user perceptions within health and finance domains. Results indicate a preference for the human metaphor (doctor) over the non-human (health encyclopedia) in health contexts for its perceived enjoyability and likeability. In finance, however, user perceptions do not significantly differ between human (financial advisor) and non-human (calculator) metaphors. Importantly, our research reveals that the explicit awareness of a metaphor's use influences adoption intentions, with a marked preference for non-human metaphors when their metaphorical nature is not disclosed. These findings highlight context-specific conversation design strategies required in integrating non-human metaphors into VUI design, suggesting tradeoffs and design considerations that could enhance user engagement and adoption.<|reference_end|>
@article{desai2024examining,
    title={Examining Humanness as a Metaphor to Design Voice User Interfaces},
    author={Smit Desai, Mateusz Dubiel, Luis A. Leiva},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.07458},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2405.07458},
    primaryClass={cs.HC}
}