Over the past two years the Ubicomp vision of ambient voice assistants, in the form of smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home, has been integrated into tens of millions of homes. However, the use of these systems over time in the home has not been studied in depth. We set out to understand exactly what users are doing with these devices over time through analyzing voice history logs of 65,499 interactions with existing Google Home devices from 88 diverse homes over an average of 110 days. We found that specific types of commands were made more often at particular times of day and that commands in some domains increased in length over time as participants tried out new ways to interact with their devices, yet exploration of new topics was low. Four distinct user groups also emerged based on using the device more or less during the day vs. in the evening or using particular categories. We conclude by comparing smart speaker use to a similar study of smartphone use and offer implications for the design of new smart speaker assistants and skills, highlighting specific areas where both manufacturers and skill providers can focus in this domain.
Voice has become a widespread and commercially viable interaction mechanism with the introduction of voice assistants (VAs), such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana. Despite their prevalence, we do not have a detailed understanding of how these technologies are used in domestic spaces. To understand how people use VAs, we conducted interviews with 19 users, and analyzed the log files of 82 Amazon Alexa devices, totaling 193,665 commands, and 88 Google Home Devices, totaling 65,499 commands. In our analysis, we identified music, search, and IoT usage as the command categories most used by VA users. We explored how VAs are used in the home, investigated the role of VAs as scaffolding for Internet of Things device control, and characterized emergent issues of privacy for VA users. We conclude with implications for the design of VAs and for future research studies of VAs.
Self-logging is a critical component to many wellbeing systems. However, self-logging often is difficult to sustain at regular intervals over many weeks. We demonstrate the power of passive mobile notifications to increase logging of wellbeing data, particularly food intake, in a mobile health service. Adding notifications increased the frequency of logging from 12% in a one-month, ten-user pilot study without reminders to 63% in the full 60-user study with reminders included. We will discuss the benefits of passive notifications over existing interruptive methods.
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