Music, Search, and IoT

TLDR

Voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana have become widespread, yet how they are used in domestic spaces remains poorly understood. The study aims to explore how VAs are used at home, their role as scaffolding for IoT device control, and emerging privacy issues. Researchers conducted interviews with 19 users and analyzed logs from 82 Alexa devices (193,665 commands) and 88 Google Home devices (65,499 commands) to investigate these uses. Analysis revealed that music, search, and IoT commands are the most common, and the study offers design implications and directions for future VA research.

Abstract

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.