Parenting Journal · Volume 2 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Speed Dating with Voice User Interfaces: Understanding How Families Interact and Perceive Voice User Interfaces in a Group Setting
Originally published 2022-01-14 · Frontiers in Robotics and AI
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/frobt.2021.730992 ↗
AI / system type
Earlier commercial voice assistants and embodied social robot; not contemporary open-ended LLM chat
Direct parenting evidenceDirectly addresses parents or caregiving, including parent studies, syntheses and audits of parenting advice.
The AI connection
Families interacted with speech/NLP voice interfaces including Alexa, Google Home, and the Jibo social robot.
Why this reading matters
Provides observable family behaviors to discuss before introducing a shared assistant, including who gets a turn and how human conversation changes.
Editorial reading guide · Collaboration
What happens to our conversation when several family members share a voice assistant?
Shows how a voice assistant can become an object around which family members talk, negotiate turns, and attribute personality. Families compared commercial voice interfaces and a more embodied social robot, with the embodied system eliciting more interaction and relational interpretations in these settings. The observations invite discussion of shared use and turn-taking without establishing a lasting family benefit.
Study context
34 families and 92 participants across three short studies of voice interfaces; one family took part in two studies
Age / stage: Participants 4–69 years; family groups included children and adults
Read with three questions
- How did embodiment, voice, and perceived personality change who interacted with the device and with one another?
- Which family expectations about an assistant’s role were visible in the short encounters?
- How would we distinguish a pleasant first impression from a tool that supports family interaction over months?
Keep the limits in view
Brief structured encounters and volunteer families do not represent everyday household use. Products differed in capabilities as well as embodiment, prior experience varied, and one early-study family contained adults only. Perceived trust or companionship is not evidence of accuracy, understanding, or improved family relationships.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Anastasia K. Ostrowski; Jenny Fu; Vasiliki Zygouras; Hae Won Park; Cynthia Breazeal (2022). Speed Dating with Voice User Interfaces: Understanding How Families Interact and Perceive Voice User Interfaces in a Group Setting Frontiers in Robotics and AI. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.730992
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.