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Alexa, stop… Alexa, stop!
Addressing communication breakdowns with voice assistants.
Way back in the 80’s, Lucy Suchman framed human-machine communication as a dialog between communication partners. From this perspective, we expect to talk to voice assistants like Siri and smart speakers like the Amazon Echo in the same way we would talk to friends and family. Our interactions with virtual assistants and social robots had radically evolved ever since. Despite advances in technology, however, the burden of adapting communication patterns still lies on humans mostly. Users must make the effort to enunciate, rephrase, and change their communication strategies, rather than the machine accommodating them.
In a study, Beneteau and colleagues observed the usage of the Amazon Echo Dot in ten homes for one month. Their analysis reveal that families apply six strategies to repair communication breakdowns or failure to exchange information. Signs of communication breakdown with voice assistants include neutral clarification responses like “Sorry, I’m not sure.” and clarification responses such as “Is that 9:00 in the morning or evening?” Clarification responses are good because the assistant is trying to repair the communication. In many cases, though, users must deal with voice assistants acting on misheard or misunderstood input.
