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Abstract
User Experience (UX) research and design have quickly gained popularity as specialties within the tech industry. Having a “good UX process” has been considered essential to successful innovation since user experience pioneer Don Norman defined the field’s relationship to “radical” and “incremental” innovation (2013). Nonetheless, UX work remains largely invisible to those outside of the echo chambers of technology and innovation. This especially applies to one subset of UX, which is still emergent and negotiating its way out of and through sandboxes: conversational user experience design. This work requires practitioners to determine what constitutes a “usable” conversation between people by testing and designing dialogue for conversational AI tools like Alexa, ChatGPT, Cleverbot, Siri, or Replika. As artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are considered critical touchpoints in a modern innovation strategy, we run the risk of conversational UX professionals being trained only in the language of technology and not in the sociocultural aspects of conversation to which anthropology can effectively speak. In this paper, I examine how social science training and cultural sensitivity are essential to building conversational AI that can support and engage its human users. Voice-controlled AI already suffers from an incapacity to understand a broad range of accents or languages. It disciplines its users to talk to it in ways that can be counterintuitive. To innovate intelligently in this area, we need user experience professionals who understand social interaction as a cultural exchange.
Plain language summary
User Experience (UX) Research and Design are areas of expertise focused on making technology accessible and enjoyable to use. Increasingly, the tech world has focused on building UX teams and integrating them into product development, as a good UX process is important to creating effective products. Even decades after the concept of user experience was popularized by Don Norman, most people aren’t aware of what UX professionals do. This is especially true when it comes to newer areas of technological development like artificial intelligence (AI) and the contribution of conversational UX professionals to AI products. Conversational UX strives to help us talk to tools like Alexa, ChatGPT, Cleverbot, Siri, or Replika so that the conversation feels as natural as possible. However, there is still a tendency for conversational UX professionals to focus too much on making the technology work and not enough on understanding the cultural nuances of how people communicate. In this paper, I discuss why it’s important for teams working on conversational AI to have social science training and be able to design for cultural and gender diversity. I argue that most tech companies falsely claim to be interested in designing for diversity and accessibility. Meanwhile, voice-controlled AI struggles with many kinds of accents and languages and forces many people to speak in unnatural ways. The field of AI development needs user experience professionals who see conversation as a cultural exchange, even when it is mediated by technology.
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Elizabeth Rodwell
Elizabeth Rodwell is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Houston and an anthropologist of science and technology. Liz is the founding director of the University of Houston User Experience Lab and executive director of the Houston chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association. Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and Social Science Research Council, and she is currently studying conversational artificial intelligence and user experience. Her first book: Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan was recently published by Duke University Press.