research-article

Does Siri Have a Soul? Exploring Voice Assistants Through Shinto Design Fictions

Authors:

William Seymour,

Max Van KleekAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3381809

Published: 25 April 2020 Publication History

Abstract

It can be difficult to critically reflect on technology that has become part of everyday rituals and routines. To combat this, speculative and fictional approaches have previously been used by HCI to decontextualise the familiar and imagine alternatives. In this work we turn to Japanese Shinto narratives as a way to defamiliarise voice assistants, inspired by the similarities between how assistants appear to 'inhabit' objects similarly to kami. Describing an alternate future where assistant presences live inside objects, this approach foregrounds some of the phenomenological quirks that can otherwise easily become lost. Divorced from the reality of daily life, this approach allows us to reevaluate some of the common interactions and design patterns that are common in the virtual assistants of the present.

References

[1]

Isaac Asimov. 1942. Runaround. Astounding Science Fiction 29, 1 (1942), 94--103.

[2]

Kieran Browne and Ben Swift. 2018. The Other Side: Algorithm as Ritual in Artificial Intelligence. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, alt11.

Digital Library

[3]

Elizabeth Buie. 2019. Let Us Say What We Mean: Towards Operational Definitions for Techno-Spirituality Research. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, alt16.

Digital Library

[4]

Jeffrey Van Camp. 2019. My Jibo is Dying and It's Breaking My Heart. (March 2019). https://www.wired.com/story/jibo-is-dying-eulogy/

[5]

Eugene Cho. 2019. Hey Google, Can I Ask You Something in Private?. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 258.

Digital Library

[6]

Paul Coulton, Joseph Lindley, Miriam Sturdee, and Mike Stead. 2017. Design Fiction as World Building. In RTD 2017.

[7]

Andy Crabtree, Tom Lodge, James Colley, Chris Greenhalgh, Kevin Glover, Hamed Haddadi, Yousef Amar, Richard Mortier, Qi Li, John Moore, and others. 2018. Building accountability into the Internet of Things: the IoT Databox model. Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments 4, 1 (2018), 39--55.

[8]

Andy Crabtree, Tom Lodge, James Colley, Chris Greenhalgh, Richard Mortier, and Hamed Haddadi. 2016. Enabling the new economic actor: data protection, the digital economy, and the Databox. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 20, 6 (2016), 947--957.

Digital Library

[9]

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. 2007. Technological Dream Series: No. 1, Robots. (2007).

[10]

Joel Feinberg. 1973. Some conjectures about the concept of respect. Journal of Social Philosophy 4, 2 (1973), 1--3.

[11]

Leah Fessler. 2017. We tested bots like Siri and Alexa to see who would stand up to sexual harassment. (2017). https://qz.com/911681/

[12]

Gilhwan Hwang, Jeewon Lee, Cindy Yoonjung Oh, and Joonhwan Lee. 2019. It Sounds Like A Woman: Exploring Gender Stereotypes in South Korean Voice Assistants. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, LBW2413.

Digital Library

[13]

Casper Bruun Jensen and Anders Blok. 2013. Techno-animism in Japan: Shinto cosmograms, actor-network theory, and the enabling powers of non-human agencies. Theory, Culture & Society 30, 2 (2013), 84--115.

[14]

Eun Hwa Jung, T Franklin Waddell, and S Shyam Sundar. 2016. Feminizing robots: User responses to gender cues on robot body and screen. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 3107--3113.

Digital Library

[15]

Thomas Kasulis. 2004. Shinto: The Way Home. University of Hawai'i Press.

[16]

Martin J Kraemer, Ivan Flechais, and Helena Webb. 2019. Exploring Communal Technology Use in the Home. In Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019. ACM, 5.

Digital Library

[17]

Sunok Lee, Sungbae Kim, and Sangsu Lee. 2019. ?What does your Agent look like?": A Drawing Study to Understand Users' Perceived Persona of Conversational Agent. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, LBW0143.

Digital Library

[18]

Irene Lopatovska and Harriet Williams. 2018. Personification of the Amazon Alexa: BFF or a Mindless Companion. In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction&Retrieval. ACM, 265--268.

Digital Library

[19]

Sarah Mennicken, Oliver Zihler, Frida Juldaschewa, Veronika Molnar, David Aggeler, and Elaine May Huang. 2016. It's like living with a friendly stranger: perceptions of personality traits in a smart home. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. ACM, 120--131.

Digital Library

[20]

Youngme Moon. 2000. Intimate exchanges: Using computers to elicit self-disclosure from consumers. Journal of consumer research 26, 4 (2000), 323--339.

[21]

Thomas More. 2012. Open Utopia. (2012).

[22]

Clifford Nass and Youngme Moon. 2000. Machines and mindlessness: Social responses to computers. Journal of social issues 56, 1 (2000), 81--103.

[23]

Clifford Nass, Jonathan Steuer, and Ellen R Tauber. 1994. Computers are social actors. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 72--78.

Digital Library

[24]

Clifford Ivar Nass and Scott Brave. 2005. Wired for speech: How voice activates and advances the human-computer relationship. MIT press Cambridge, MA.

Digital Library

[25]

Antti Oulasvirta, Aurora Pihlajamaa, Jukka Perki�, Debarshi Ray, Taneli V�h�kangas, Tero Hasu, Niklas Vainio, and Petri Myllym�ki. 2012. Long-term effects of ubiquitous surveillance in the home. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. ACM, 41--50.

Digital Library

[26]

Isabella Poggi and Francesca D'Errico. 2011. Social signals: A psychological perspective. In Computer analysis of human behavior. Springer, 185--225.

[27]

Jon Rogers, Loraine Clarke, Martin Skelly, Nick Taylor, Pete Thomas, Michelle Thorne, Solana Larsen, Katarzyna Odrozek, Julia Kloiber, Peter Bihr, Anab Jain, Jon Arden, and Max von Grafenstein. 2019. Our Friends Electric: Reflections on Advocacy and Design Research for the Voice Enabled Internet. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19). 114:1--114:13.

Digital Library

[28]

Kokugakuin University. Encyclopedia of Shinto.

[29]

Mark West, Rebecca Kraut, and Han Ei Chew. 2019. I'd blush if I could: closing gender divides in digital skills through education. (2019).

Cited By

Shalawadi SEchtler FRaptis D(2024)Dr. Convenience Love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Voice Assistant✱Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685364(1-14)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685364
Ge XXu CMisaki DMarkus HTsai J(2024)How Culture Shapes What People Want From AIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642660(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642660
Phutane MJung CChen NAzenkot S(2023)Speaking with My Screen Reader: Using Audio Fictions to Explore Conversational Access to InterfacesProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608404(1-18)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3608404
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Does Siri Have a Soul? Exploring Voice Assistants Through Shinto Design Fictions
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Natural language interfaces
  2. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms

Recommendations

Experiential Qualities of Whispering with Voice Assistants
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We present a Research through Design project that explores how whispering influences the ways people experience and interact with voice assistants. The research project includes a co-speculation workshop and the use of a design probe, which culminated in ...
Speaking with My Screen Reader: Using Audio Fictions to Explore Conversational Access to Interfaces
ASSETS '23: Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Conversational assistants, an inherently accessible mode of interaction for blind and low vision (BLV) individuals, offer opportunities to support nonvisual access in new ways. In this paper, we explore whether and how human-like conversations can ...
Towards More Transactional Voice Assistants: Investigating the Potential for a Multimodal Voice-Activated Indoor Navigation Assistant for Blind and Sighted Travelers
CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Voice assistants (VAs) – like Amazon Alexa or Siri – offer hands-/eyes-free interactions that are beneficial to a range of users, including individuals who are blind, to fulfill tasks that are otherwise difficult or inaccessible. While these interfaces ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2020

4474 pages

ISBN:9781450368193

DOI:10.1145/3334480

General Chairs:
Regina Bernhaupt
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
,
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller
Monash University, Australia
,
David Verweij
Newcastle University, UK
,
Josh Andres
RMIT, Australia
,
Program Chairs:
Joanna McGrenere
University of British Columbia, Canada
,
Andy Cockburn
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
,
Ignacio Avellino
University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
,
Alix Goguey
Grenoble Alpes University, France
,
Pernille Bj�rn
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
,
Shengdong (Shen) Zhao
National University of Singapore, Singapore
,
Briane Paul Samson
Future University Hakodate, Japan & De La Salle University, Philippines
,
Rafal Kocielnik
University of Washington, USA

Copyright � 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 April 2020

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Conference

CHI '20

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI '20: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 25 - 30, 2020

HI, Honolulu, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

16
Total Citations
View Citations
698
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)98
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)10

Reflects downloads up to 18 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Shalawadi SEchtler FRaptis D(2024)Dr. Convenience Love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Voice Assistant✱Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685364(1-14)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685364
Ge XXu CMisaki DMarkus HTsai J(2024)How Culture Shapes What People Want From AIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642660(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642660
Phutane MJung CChen NAzenkot S(2023)Speaking with My Screen Reader: Using Audio Fictions to Explore Conversational Access to InterfacesProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608404(1-18)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3608404
Halperin BRosner D(2023)Miracle Machine in the Making: Soulful Speculation with KabbalahProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3595990(1740-1756)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563657.3595990
Byun CVasicek PSeppi K(2023)Dispensing with Humans in Human-Computer Interaction ResearchExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3582749(1-26)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3582749
Scott ANeumann DNiess JWoźniak P(2023)Do You Mind? User Perceptions of Machine ConsciousnessProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581296(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581296
Soubutts EAyobi AEardley RMcNaney RCater KO'Kane A(2022)Amazon Echo Show as a Multimodal Human-to-Human Care Support Tool within Self-Isolating Older UK HouseholdsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35551936:CSCW2(1-31)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555193
Batista Gde Souza Monteiro Mde Castro Salgado LSantos CBento Villela MRios da Hora Rodrigues Kde Gois Ribeiro Darin T(2022)How do ChatBots look like?Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3554364.3559138(1-8)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3554364.3559138
Kinnee BRosner DDesjardins A(2022)Sonic Technologies of a Queer BreakupProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533542(1377-1393)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532106.3533542
Shorter MMinder BRogers JBaldauf MTodisco AJunginger SAytaç AWolf P(2022)Materialising the Immaterial: Provotyping to Explore Voice Assistant ComplexitiesProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533519(1512-1524)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532106.3533519
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents