Benjamin R Cowan

Justin Edwards, Christian Janssen, Sandy Gould et al.

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.

Philip R Doyle, Leigh Clark, Benjamin R Cowan

Perceptions of system competence and communicative ability, termed partner models, play a significant role in speech interface interaction. Yet we do not know what the core dimensions of this concept are. Taking a psycholexical approach, our paper is the first to identify the key dimensions that define partner models in speech agent interaction. Through a repertory grid study (N=21), a review of key subjective questionnaires, an expert review of resulting word pairs and an online study of 356 user of speech interfaces, we identify three key dimensions that make up a users' partner model: 1) perceptions toward competence and capability; 2) assessment of human-likeness; and 3) a system's perceived cognitive flexibility. We discuss the implications for partner modelling as a concept, emphasising the importance of salience and the dynamic nature of these perceptions.