Coimagining the Future of Voice Assistants with Cultural Sensitivity

Table 2

Thematic framework for imagined dialogues.

Theme	Subtheme	Description	Theme source	US	JP	Total
Social aspects^a	Social protocol	Use of polite conventions in speech, including greetings and short confirmations.	Völkel et al. [15]	26	11	37
	Chit-chat	Informal and impersonal speech, especially small talk.	Völkel et al. [15]	68	121	189
	Interpersonal connections	Personal conversations that show a deeper connection and/or a longer-term relationship.	Völkel et al. [15]	40	33	73
	Mutual respect	Both appear to respect each other and treat each other as peers.	Inductive	33	28	61
	Advice	Asking for or receiving advice.	Inductive	33	36	75
	Sounding board	Rants, complaints, or sharing personal woes without the implication of reciprocity.	Inductive	33	36	69
	Ideological engagement	Discussions of opinions, beliefs, ideology, and other deeper, possibly heated subjects.	Inductive	12	29	41
	Harassment	Swear words, put-downs, insults, and other harmful verbal talk.	Inductive	6	1	7
VA behaviour	Recommending	Suggests a particular option.	Völkel et al. [15]	13	16	29
	Giving an opinion	Offers ideas or judgments.	Völkel et al. [15]	27	30	57
	Thinking ahead	Foresees and suggests the next course of action without input.	Völkel et al. [15]	5	26	31
	Contradicting	Disagrees, contradicts, or argues with the user.	Völkel et al. [15]	4	3	7
	Humour	Makes jokes and funny comments.	Völkel et al. [15]	2	1	3
	About the user	Such as user preferences.	Völkel et al. [15]	3	9	12
VA knowledge	About the environment	Context-aware and connected to other devices.	Völkel et al. [15]	38	46	84
	Technical omnipotence	Provides immediate, accurate, and detailed information.	Inductive	19	43	62
	Trusting the VA with complex Tasks	Carries out socially or professionally risky tasks.	Völkel et al. [15]	29	39	68
User behaviour^b	Giving the VA the lead	Allows the partner to take control or relies on the partner to go first.	Völkel et al. [15]	67	51	118
	Grounding behaviour	Indicates understanding of user input with short affirmatives or repetitions of the user’s speech.	Vtyurina and Fourney [69]	17	8	25
	Implicit next	Without asking a question or saying “next,” the partner knows to continue and/or respond.	Vtyurina and Fourney [69]	57	62	119
Discourse features	Plain language/tameguchi^c	Japanese: informal language suggesting power differentials or psychological closeness [71].	Inductive		102
	Gendered language	Gendered pronouns, words, names, etc.	Inductive	8	2	10
	Slang	Very informal and possibly offensive words or phrases.	Inductive	6	11	17

^aThe first three subthemes were drawn from Völkel et al. [15] and originally categorized as “social aspects.” ^bWe did not include the “suggesting,” “refusing,” “assigning characteristics to the VA,” and “asking for Feedback” subthemes from Völkel et al. [15] because there were zero instances in our data set. ^cApplies only to the Japanese group as a feature of the Japanese language.