Related papers: Evaluating Voice Skills by Design Guidelines Using…
Conversational systems use spoken language to interact with their users. Although conversational systems, such as Amazon Alexa, are becoming common and afford interesting functionalities, there is little known about the issues users of…
Many Internet of Things (IoT) devices have voice user interfaces (VUIs). One of the most popular VUIs is Amazon's Alexa, which supports more than 47,000 third-party applications ("skills"). We study how Alexa's integration of these skills…
Many businesses and consumers are extending the capabilities of voice-based services such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana, and Apple Siri to create custom voice experiences (also known as skills). As the number of these…
Voice assistants have sharply risen in popularity in recent years, but their use has been limited mostly to simple applications like music, hands-free search, or control of internet-of-things devices. What would it take for voice assistants…
The home voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa have become increasingly popular due to many interesting voice-activated services provided through special applications called skills. These skills, though useful, have also introduced new…
The adoption of voice assistants like Alexa or Siri has grown rapidly, allowing users to instantly access information via voice search. Query suggestion is a standard feature of screen-based search experiences, allowing users to explore…
Online Digital Assistants, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri are very popular and provide a range or services to their users, a key function is their ability to satisfy user information needs from the sources available to…
In traditional (desktop) e-commerce search, a customer issues a specific query and the system returns a ranked list of products in order of relevance to the query. An increasingly popular alternative in e-commerce search is to issue a…
Advances in voice technology and voice user interfaces (VUIs) -- such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Home -- have opened up the potential for many new types of interaction. However, despite the potential of these devices reflected by the…
Voice Assistants (VA) such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are quickly and seamlessly integrating into people's daily lives. The increased reliance on VA services raises privacy concerns such as the leakage of private conversations and…
Voice Personal Assistants (VPA) have become a common household appliance. As one of the leading platforms for VPA technology, Amazon created Alexa and designed Amazon Kids for children to safely enjoy the rich functionalities of VPA and for…
While Alexa can perform over 100,000 skills on paper, its capability covers only a fraction of what is possible on the web. To reach the full potential of an assistant, it is desirable that individuals can create skills to automate their…
To improve user experience, Alexa now allows users to consent to data sharing via voice rather than directing them to the companion smartphone app. While verbal consent mechanisms for voice assistants (VAs) can increase usability, they can…
Since being launched in 2014, Alexa, Amazon's versatile cloud-based voice service, is now active in over 100 million households worldwide. Alexa's user-friendly, personalized vocal experience offers customers a more natural way of…
The Amazon Alexa marketplace is the largest Voice Personal Assistant (VPA) platform with over 100,000 voice applications (i.e., skills) published to the skills store. In an effort to maintain the quality and trustworthiness of voice-apps,…
Intelligent agents such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are now built into streaming TV systems, allowing people to use voice input to navigate the increasingly complex set of apps available on a TV. However, these systems typically…
Active listening is a well-known skill applied in human communication to build intimacy and elicit self-disclosure to support a wide variety of cooperative tasks. When applied to conversational UIs, active listening from machines can also…
Voice applications (voice apps) are a key element in Voice Assistant ecosystems such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, as they provide assistants with a wide range of capabilities that users can invoke with a voice command. Most voice…
In the IoT world, intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) is a popular service to interact with users based on voice command. For optimal performance and efficient data management, famous IVAs like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant usually…
Third-party software, or skills, are essential components in Smart Personal Assistants (SPA). The number of skills has grown rapidly, dominated by a changing environment that has no clear business model. Skills can access personal…