Voice control system and multiplatform use: Specialist vs. generalist?

Abstract

How do participants respond to and prefer either a common voice agent that follows them across platforms or a community of specialist agents connected to specific hardware platform. This study examines users’ gender as it relates to preference for voice-control system (VCS). The participants experiences a VCS agent that followed them across platforms such as from a smart pone to a personal cloud computing (PCC) or smart TV. One group met a different specialist agents that were tied to different devices. This study pits the effect of specialization by interface against the principle of consistency design principle with regards to voice agents. However, we found a strong gender effect, females preferred a single, generalist female agent across platforms while males tended to prefer different, specialist female agents embodying different platform.