Voice Design to Support Young Children's Agency in Child-Agent Interaction

Layne Hubbard; Shanli Ding; Vananh Le; Pilyoung Kim; Tom Yeh

doi:10.1145/3469595.3469604

Voice Design to Support Young Children's Agency in Child-Agent Interaction

Layne Hubbard, Shanli Ding, Vananh Le, Pilyoung Kim, Tom Yeh

Department of Psychology

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Agency is essential to play. As we design conversational agents for early childhood, how might we increase the child-centeredness of our approaches? Giving children agency and control in choosing their agent representations might contribute to the overall playfulness of our designs. In this study with 33 children ages 4-5 years old, we engaged children in a creative storytelling interaction with conversational agents in stuffed animal embodiments. Young children conversed with the stuffed animal agents to tell stories about their creative play, engaging in question and answer conversation from 2 minutes to 24 minutes. We then interviewed the children about their perceptions of the agent's voice, and their ideas for agent voices, dialogues, and interactions. From babies to robot daddies, we discover three themes from children's suggestions: Family Voices, Robot Voices, and Character Voices. Additionally, children desire agents who (1) scaffold creative play in addition to storytelling, (2) foster personal, social, and emotional connections, and (3) support children's agency and control. Across these themes, we recommend design strategies to support the overall playful child-centeredness of conversational agent design.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450389983
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3469595.3469604
State	Published - 27 Jul 2021
Event	3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021 - Virtual, Online, Spain Duration: 27 Jul 2021 → 29 Jul 2021

Publication series

Name	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference	3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021
Country/Territory	Spain
City	Virtual, Online
Period	27/07/21 → 29/07/21

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Owner/Author.

Keywords

agency
child-agent interaction
conversational agents
creativity support
play
storytelling

Access to Document

10.1145/3469595.3469604

Cite this

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title = "Voice Design to Support Young Children's Agency in Child-Agent Interaction",

abstract = "Agency is essential to play. As we design conversational agents for early childhood, how might we increase the child-centeredness of our approaches? Giving children agency and control in choosing their agent representations might contribute to the overall playfulness of our designs. In this study with 33 children ages 4-5 years old, we engaged children in a creative storytelling interaction with conversational agents in stuffed animal embodiments. Young children conversed with the stuffed animal agents to tell stories about their creative play, engaging in question and answer conversation from 2 minutes to 24 minutes. We then interviewed the children about their perceptions of the agent's voice, and their ideas for agent voices, dialogues, and interactions. From babies to robot daddies, we discover three themes from children's suggestions: Family Voices, Robot Voices, and Character Voices. Additionally, children desire agents who (1) scaffold creative play in addition to storytelling, (2) foster personal, social, and emotional connections, and (3) support children's agency and control. Across these themes, we recommend design strategies to support the overall playful child-centeredness of conversational agent design.",

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Hubbard, L, Ding, S, Le, V, Kim, P & Yeh, T 2021, Voice Design to Support Young Children's Agency in Child-Agent Interaction. in Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021., 9, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery, 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021, Virtual, Online, Spain, 27/07/21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3469595.3469604

Voice Design to Support Young Children's Agency in Child-Agent Interaction. / Hubbard, Layne; Ding, Shanli; Le, Vananh et al.
Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. 9 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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PY - 2021/7/27

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N2 - Agency is essential to play. As we design conversational agents for early childhood, how might we increase the child-centeredness of our approaches? Giving children agency and control in choosing their agent representations might contribute to the overall playfulness of our designs. In this study with 33 children ages 4-5 years old, we engaged children in a creative storytelling interaction with conversational agents in stuffed animal embodiments. Young children conversed with the stuffed animal agents to tell stories about their creative play, engaging in question and answer conversation from 2 minutes to 24 minutes. We then interviewed the children about their perceptions of the agent's voice, and their ideas for agent voices, dialogues, and interactions. From babies to robot daddies, we discover three themes from children's suggestions: Family Voices, Robot Voices, and Character Voices. Additionally, children desire agents who (1) scaffold creative play in addition to storytelling, (2) foster personal, social, and emotional connections, and (3) support children's agency and control. Across these themes, we recommend design strategies to support the overall playful child-centeredness of conversational agent design.

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ER -

Voice Design to Support Young Children's Agency in Child-Agent Interaction

Abstract

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

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