Materialising the Immaterial: Provotyping to Explore Voice Assistant Complexities

Michael Shorter, Bettina Minder, Jon Rogers, Matthias Baldauf, Aurelio Todisco, Sabine Junginger, Aysun Aytaç, Patricia Wolf

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    5 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Voice assistants (VAs), typically promoted as omniscient conversational butlers, still remain below users' expectations. Interaction designers seem to struggle bringing in user perspectives necessary to develop more meaningful VA applications beyond simple use cases such as playing music. One of the reasons might be the immateriality of cloud-based VA technology making it difficult to comprehend such complex and ever-evolving systems. In this paper, we investigate provotyping as a design tool for 'materialising the immaterial'. In our case study, teams of multidisciplinary experts devised twelve provotypes to explore intangible VA technology. We present and discuss three generalisations in respect to the role of provotypes for the exploration of VAs. Our findings show provotypes can serve as the necessary props by which we can bring in missing perspectives around this technology and generate material which enables designers to speculate, debate, and sketch out ideas for meaningful futures of VA applications.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationDIS '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
    Subtitle of host publicationDigital Wellbeing
    EditorsFlorian `Floyd' Mueller, Stefan Greuter, Rohit Ashok Khot, Penny Sweetser, Marianna Obrist
    Place of PublicationNew York, US
    PublisherACM
    Pages1512-1524
    Number of pages13
    ISBN (Electronic)9781450393584
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 13 Jun 2022
    EventDIS '22: Designing Interactive Systems Conference - Online, Online, Australia
    Duration: 13 Jun 202217 Jun 2022
    https://dis.acm.org/2022/
    https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3532106

    Conference

    ConferenceDIS '22
    Abbreviated titleDIS '22
    Country/TerritoryAustralia
    CityOnline
    Period13/06/2217/06/22
    Internet address

    Keywords

    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Prototyping
    • Provotyping
    • Research Through Design
    • Speculative Design
    • Voice Assistants

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