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StreetWise: Smart Speakers vs Human Help in Public Slum Settings

Authors:

Jennifer Pearson,

Simon Robinson,

Thomas Reitmaier,

Shashank Ahire,

Anirudha Joshi,

Bhakti BhikneAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Paper No.: 96, Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300326

Published: 02 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

This paper explores the use of conversational speech question and answer systems in the challenging context of public spaces in slums. A major part of this work is a comparison of the source and speed of the given responses; that is, either machine-powered and instant or human-powered and delayed. We examine these dimensions via a two-stage, multi-sited deployment. We report on a pilot deployment that helped refine the system, and a second deployment involving the installation of nine of each type of system within a large Mumbai slum for a 40-day period, resulting in over 12,000 queries. We present the findings from a detailed analysis and comparison of the two question-answer corpora; discuss how these insights might help improve machine-powered smart speakers; and, highlight the potential benefits of multi-sited public speech installations within slum environments.

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Cited By

Shivangi Joshi ASingh A(2025)Comparative Evaluation of Speech Interfaces of Conversational Agents in HindiHuman-Computer Interaction. Design and Research10.1007/978-3-031-80829-6_6(125-145)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-80829-6_6
Chang FSheng LGu Z(2024)Investigating the Integration and the Long-Term Use of Smart Speakers in Older Adults’ Daily Practices: Qualitative StudyJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/4747212(e47472)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/47472
Ahire SSimon BRohs M(2024)WorkFit: Designing Proactive Voice Assistance for the Health and Well-Being of Knowledge WorkersProceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3640794.3665561(1-14)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640794.3665561
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

StreetWise: Smart Speakers vs Human Help in Public Slum Settings
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
2. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Specialized information retrieval
      1. Multimedia and multimodal retrieval
        Speech / audio search

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2019

9077 pages

ISBN:9781450359702

DOI:10.1145/3290605

General Chairs:
Stephen Brewster
University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
,
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
TU Wien, Austria
,
Program Chairs:
Anna Cox
University College London, UK
,
Vassilis Kostakos
University of Melbourne, Australia

Copyright © 2019 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].

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 02 May 2019

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Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

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CHI '19

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SIGCHI

CHI '19: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 4 - 9, 2019

Glasgow, Scotland Uk

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CHI '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 703 of 2,958 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

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Cited By

Shivangi Joshi ASingh A(2025)Comparative Evaluation of Speech Interfaces of Conversational Agents in HindiHuman-Computer Interaction. Design and Research10.1007/978-3-031-80829-6_6(125-145)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-80829-6_6
Chang FSheng LGu Z(2024)Investigating the Integration and the Long-Term Use of Smart Speakers in Older Adults’ Daily Practices: Qualitative StudyJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/4747212(e47472)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/47472
Ahire SSimon BRohs M(2024)WorkFit: Designing Proactive Voice Assistance for the Health and Well-Being of Knowledge WorkersProceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3640794.3665561(1-14)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640794.3665561
Doke PKopparapu S(2024)Challenges and Opportunities Designing Voice User Interfaces for Emergent UsersHuman-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-60449-2_1(3-16)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-60449-2_1
Saha MLindsay SVarghese DBartindale TOlivier P(2023)Benefits of Community Voice: A Framework for Understanding Inclusion of Community Voice in HCI4DProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101747:CSCW2(1-26)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610174
Reitmaier TWallington EKlejch OMarkl NLam-Yee-Mui LPearson JJones MBell PRobinson S(2023)Situating Automatic Speech Recognition Development within Communities of Under-heard Language SpeakersProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581385(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581385
Bartle VAlbright LDell N(2023)"This machine is for the aides": Tailoring Voice Assistant Design to Home Health Care WorkProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581118(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581118
Ahire S(2022)Designing a Smart Speaker for Emergent Users: Human Plus AI ResponseProceedings of the 13th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3570211.3570217(67-72)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3570211.3570217
Acer UBroeck MMin CDasari MKawsar F(2022)The City as a Personal AssistantProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35345736:2(1-31)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3534573
Jones MVon Feldt MAndrus N(2022)Outside Where? A Survey of Climates and Built Environments in Studies of HCI outdoorsProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3507656(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3507656
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