Graduate Studies

Digital Futures (MA, MDes and MFA)

Manisha Laroia

Sketches in Voice User Interface - Relational conversations with virtual personal assistants in domestic spaces

Sketches in Voice User Interface(VUI) explores ways in which VUIs can be designed to go beyond the existing virtual personal assistant in our everyday conversations, specifically as smart speaker embodiments. Unlike conventional voice-based virtual assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant), the Sketches in VUI drive conversations and take an agentive role in human-computer conversational interactions. The Sketches in VUI is a portfolio of four Sketches. Sketch 1:The Thinker asks questions to build on people's ideas. Sketch 2:The Listener wants to know what one is thinking and is there to hear them out. Sketch 3: The Learner attempts to engage people around it in a conversation and, Sketch 4:The Chatterer only wants to talk about itself. This work explores the complex machinery that is 'human-computer conversations', critiquing the master-servant relationship we have with this technology in our domestic spaces and proposes a designed associate-like relationship with this agentive tool.