Family-Centered Exploration of the Benefits and Burdens of Digital Home Assistants

Abstract

Parents receive conflicting information on the benefits and burdens of children's technology use, especially novel technologies such as digital home assistants. To understand parents' views, we analyzed relevant Amazon Echo device product reviews posted to Amazon.com, and deployed a User Benefit and Burden Survey to 131 parents on Amazon Mechanical Turk to explore their perspectives of Amazon Echo digital home assistants. Our work explores parents' perceptions of the devices with regards to their children and families, in terms of attributes such as benefits and burdens. This study contributes an empirical, family-centered understanding of and design opportunities for whole home personal assistants in support of a diversity of families.