Eliciting Spoken Interruptions to Inform Proactive Speech Agent Design

Justin Edwards, Christian Janssen, Sandy Gould, Benjamin R. Cowan

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

Abstract

Current speech agent interactions are typically user-initiated, limiting the interactions they can deliver. Future functionality will require agents to be proactive, sometimes interrupting users. Little is known about how these spoken interruptions should be designed, especially in urgent interruption contexts. We look to inform design of proactive agent interruptions through investigating how people interrupt others engaged in complex tasks. We therefore developed a new technique to elicit human spoken interruptions of people engaged in other tasks. We found that people interrupted sooner when interruptions were urgent. Some participants used access rituals to forewarn interruptions, but most rarely used them. People balanced speed and accuracy in timing interruptions, often using cues from the task they interrupted. People also varied phrasing and delivery of interruptions to reflect urgency. We discuss how our findings can inform speech agent design and how our paradigm can help gain insight into human interruptions in new contexts.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCUI '21
Subtitle of host publicationCUI 2021 - 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages1-12
ISBN (Electronic)9781450389983
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 27 Jul 2021
Event3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021 - Virtual, Online, Spain
Duration: 27 Jul 202129 Jul 2021

Conference

Conference3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021
Country/TerritorySpain
CityVirtual, Online
Period27/07/2129/07/21

Keywords

  • interruptions
  • multitasking
  • proactive agents
  • speech interfaces
  • urgency

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