Voice-based interfaces provide new opportunities for firms to interact with consumers along the customer journey. The current work demonstrates across four studies that voice-based (as opposed to text-based) interfaces promote more flow-like user experiences, resulting in more positively-valenced service experiences, and ultimately more favorable behavioral firm outcomes (i.e., contract renewal, conversion rates, and consumer sentiment). Moreover, we also provide evidence for two important boundary conditions that reduce such flow-like user experiences in voice-based interfaces (i.e., semantic disfluency and the amount of conversational turns). The findings of this research highlight how fundamental theories of human communication can be harnessed to create more experiential service experiences with positive downstream consequences for consumers and firms. These findings have important practical implications for firms that aim at leveraging the potential of voice-based interfaces to improve consumers’ service experiences and the theory-driven “conversational design” of voice-based interfaces.

Gendered voice based on pitch is a prevalent design element in many contemporary Voice Assistants (VAs) but has shown to strengthen harmful stereotypes. Interestingly, there is a dearth of research that systematically analyses user perceptions of diferent voice genders in VAs. This study investigates gender-stereotyping across two diferent tasks by analyzing the infuence of pitch (low, high) and gender (women, men) on stereotypical trait ascription and trust formation in an exploratory online experiment with 234 participants. Additionally, we deploy a gender-ambiguous voice to compare against gendered voices. Our fndings indicate that implicit stereotyping occurs for VAs. Moreover, we can show that there are no signifcant diferences in trust formed towards a gender-ambiguous voice versus gendered voices, which highlights their potential for commercial usage. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → User interface design; Empirical studies in HCI; Sound-based input / output; Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms; • Social and professional topics → Gender.

Conversational Agents (CAs) have become a new paradigm for human-computer interaction. Despite the potential benefits, there are ethical challenges to the widespread use of these agents that may inhibit their use for individual and social goals. However, besides a multitude of behavioral and design-oriented studies on CAs, a distinct ethical perspective falls rather short in the current literature. In this paper, we present the first steps of our design science research project on principles for a value-sensitive design of CAs. Based on theoretical insights from 87 papers and eleven user interviews, we propose preliminary requirements and design principles for a value-sensitive design of CAs. Moreover, we evaluate the preliminary principles with an expert-based evaluation. The evaluation confirms that an ethical approach for design CAs might be promising for certain scenarios.

Smart Personal Assistants (SPA) fundamentally influence the way individuals perform tasks, use services and interact with organizations. They thus bear an immense economic and societal potential. However, a lack of trust-rooted in perceptions of uncertainty and risk-when interacting with intelligent computer agents can inhibit their adoption. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review to investigate the state of knowledge on trust in SPAs. Based on a concept-centric analysis of 50 papers, we derive three distinct research perspectives that constitute this nascent field: user interface-driven, interaction-driven, and explanation-driven trust in SPAs. Building on the results of our analysis, we develop a research agenda to spark and guide future research surrounding trust in SPAs. Ultimately, this paper intends to contribute to the body of knowledge of trust in artificial intelligence-based systems, specifically SPAs. It does so by proposing a novel framework mapping out their relationship.

Intelligent agents (IAs) are permeating both business and society. However, interacting with IAs poses challenges moving beyond technological limitations towards the human-computer interface. Thus, the knowledgebase related to interaction with IAs has grown exponentially but remains segregated and impedes the advancement of the field. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature review to integrate empirical knowledge on user interaction with IAs. This is the first paper to examine 107 Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction papers and identified 389 relationships between design elements and user acceptance of IAs. Along the independent and dependent variables of these relationships, we span a research space model encompassing empirical research on designing for IA user acceptance. Further we contribute to theory, by presenting a research agenda along the dimensions of the research space, which shall be useful to both researchers and practitioners. This complements the past and present knowledge on designing for IA user acceptance with potential pathways into the future of IAs.