Where Does the Connective Power of Voice Interaction Come From?

This is the first article of a series which explores human relationships with non-living objects, through the perspective of voice assistants

Part 1 of 6

For a while now I’ve been intrigued by voice assistants and our seemingly inherent emotional response to them. So when a friend recently proclaimed that “with us, Alexa has become a family member. We greet her every morning when we come into the room”, it stirred up a few interesting questions, such as:

What caused my friend to liken Alexa to a family member? Why are we in the process of projecting our urge to form relationships towards voice assistants? Is this happening consciously?

The Power of Voice and Listening

Some interesting revelations came as I was watching Esther Perel’s SXSW 2018 talk on relationships (‘Modern Love and Relationships’). In a talk that’s worth your attention both personally and professionally for a number of good reasons, the renowned Belgian psychotherapist discusses relationships and the fundamental changes they have been undergoing for a while now.

At one point, she asks all members of the audience to put on blindfolds. While the puzzled crowd murmurs and giggles in discomfort of her request, she explains: “You see, when you limit one sense, like sight, it often activates the other senses. And the first one it activates is actually listening”. She goes on to call LISTENING our first most primal CONNECTIVE sense. The FIRST sense we experience as humans in utero.

…I’d like to make an Obama-esque rhetorical pause here to let this sink in properly…

Now cut back to the voice assistants and what that would mean for interactions with them:

The Expectations Of Being Human(-like)

First, can it be that we are prone to instinctively form a relationship with someTHING because it speaks, even though we are rationally aware it isn’t human?

Second, would taking away the visual UI also elevate our listening ability thus giving voice UIs an inherent power for connection?

And finally, if we were indeed more likely to react emotionally to a voice interaction, than to pressing buttons on an app, such “human-like” connection would certainly go both ways: we can both love it for helping us out and hate it if it fails to. And in such case we would blame Alexa “personally”, having a hard time separating Amazon or third party skill makers with the imagined “person” behind the voice. So the person better “explain herself”.

Needless to say, a huge effort goes into endowing voice UIs with proper assistant personas. Not only should Alexa & co try to make our lives easier, they should do so with an attitude and tone of a human who are great at their job.

Easier said than done. For reasons I haven’t yet figured out, Alexa sometimes returns nothing but a wordless ‘ba-bong’ sound, — a rudeness that puts a dent in our tender relationship each time. On the other hand, I recently asked her for the zip code of a tiny German village. The system didn’t know the answer, so anticipating my frustration she answered along the lines of: “Unfortunately, I’m not sure.” Because it felt like she was herself frustrated not to be able to fulfil her task, even though I was denied an answer, I left the conversation with more empathy for “Alexa” and its makers.

Much like with the rule #1 from Pixars 22 Rules of Storytelling: You admire a character for trying more than for their success ;)

In Part II-VI of this series I’ll talk about:

• What is the difference between language and voice?
• What do we experience biologically and psychologically when we hear a voice?
• What can we tell about a person whose voice we hear?
• Can disembodied voices from the loudspeaker convey the same qualities?

Make sure to follow “Alexa, do you love me?” to stay in touch.

About me: Dancer | Human Centered Designer| Expert speaker on empathy and design | www.wunschfeld.net

Together with Karile Klugand Stefan Kollmeier I organise a 2 day training into voice assistant application design. Our workshop is driven by observation, that designing for convincing voice-first experiences is closer to the practices of creating theatre plays or movie scripts than it is to the usual user interface design process.