Eliciting Spoken Interruptions to Inform Proactive Speech Agent Design

TL;DR

This study investigates how humans interrupt others during complex tasks to inform the design of proactive speech agents capable of timely and context-aware interruptions, especially in urgent situations.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel technique to elicit human spoken interruptions and provides insights into timing, phrasing, and cues used, informing proactive speech agent design.

Findings

Urgent interruptions are made sooner.

Few participants used access rituals to warn interruptions.

Interruptions are influenced by task cues and urgency.

Abstract

Current speech agent interactions are typically user-initiated, limiting the interactions they can deliver. Future functionality will require agents to be proactive, sometimes interrupting users. Little is known about how these spoken interruptions should be designed, especially in urgent interruption contexts. We look to inform design of proactive agent interruptions through investigating how people interrupt others engaged in complex tasks. We therefore developed a new technique to elicit human spoken interruptions of people engaged in other tasks. We found that people interrupted sooner when interruptions were urgent. Some participants used access rituals to forewarn interruptions, but most rarely used them. People balanced speed and accuracy in timing interruptions, often using cues from the task they interrupted. People also varied phrasing and delivery of interruptions to reflect urgency. We discuss how our findings can inform speech agent design and how our paradigm can help gain insight into human interruptions in new contexts.