Assistant Or Friend? Research On Users’ Preferences Of Intelligent Voice Products

Intelligent voice products play a more and more important role in our life.Voice interaction will be ubiquitous in the future.In the past,more attention was paid to the impact of appearance and interaction on users.However,there are few researches on the anthropomorphic design of auditory cues,especially on the gender differences of intelligent voice products.This study starts with the voice anthropomorphic cues of intelligent voice products,and aims to evaluate how the acoustic gender characteristics of intelligent voice products affect users’ perception and preference.In order to study what users perceive when interacting with anthropomorphic intelligent voice products and how it affects users’ attitude,this study introduces social perception theory and schema consistency theory.This paper empirically studies users’ preference for intelligent voice products by manipulating the gender of voice and combining the different roles of intelligent voice products.It expands the research work of product personification and human-computer interaction.It is found that in the process of human-computer interaction,users perceive the warm features of intelligent voice agents and have gender stereotypes.The details are as follows:(1)Users will attribute more masculine traits to male speaking intelligent voice products,and more feminine traits to female speaking intelligent voice products.(2)Users’ preference for products with different gender pronunciation is realized through warmth perception.The higher the degree of warmth perception is,the more positive the user’s attitude is.(3)Users seem to prefer intelligent products with female pronunciation.(4)Users prefer male voice products to act as assistants,while products with peer role prefer female voice.