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Putting Wake-Up Words to Bed – Saul Albert


Magnus Hamann and I wrote a provocative article for the Third Conversational User Interfaces Conference 2021.

In this paper, we argue (hopefully provocatively) that voice user interface designers should stop using wake words like “Alexa” and “Hey Siri” that detract from each other’s audible environment of the smart home. Our point is that as interface elements, wake words are misleading to users who appear to treat them as interactional invocations in their own right, when in reality they are little more than glorified ‘buttons’. walk “.

We received a surprisingly positive response from the technically inclined audience at the conference. I found this surprising mainly because wake words are so ubiquitous and central to the branding and functionality of today’s voice interfaces that it seems hard to imagine them being phased out over time. profit from something more prosaic.

You can read the full article on the ACM website or a preprint here.

References

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