Humanness is core to speech interface design. Yet little is known about how users conceptualise perceptions of humanness and how people define their interaction with speech interfaces through this. To map these perceptions n=21 participants held dialogues with a human and two speech interface based intelligent personal assistants, and then reflected and compared their experiences using the repertory grid technique. Analysis of the constructs show that perceptions of humanness are multidimensional, focusing on eight key themes: partner knowledge set, interpersonal connection, linguistic content, partner performance and capabilities, conversational interaction, partner identity and role, vocal qualities and behavioral affordances. Through these themes, it is clear that users define the capabilities of speech interfaces differently to humans, seeing them as more formal, fact based, impersonal and less authentic. Based on the findings, we discuss how the themes help to scaffold, categorise and target research and design efforts, considering the appropriateness of emulating humanness.

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Fifteen doctoral students enrolled in a variety of humanities and social science programmes from a single metropolitan university in Ireland discussed their practices and habits associated with personal information management via three focus groups, in order to explore personal information management skills at different stages of the doctoral programme. Findings suggest that personal information management needs of doctoral students managing dissertation/thesis information can be categorised as three distinct stages: beginning, middle and end of the doctoral programme. In developing services to meet the needs of this population, information professionals may find it useful to classify such services via these three stages.

twitter.com/JustinHCI) is a PhD candidate in the School of Information and Communication Studies with an interest in multitasking with conversational agents.