Metaphors play a critical role in shaping user experiences with Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), yet existing designs often rely on static, human-centric metaphors that fail to adapt to diverse contexts and user needs. This paper introduces Metaphor-Fluid Design, a novel approach that dynamically adjusts metaphorical representations based on conversational use-contexts. We compare this approach to a Default VUI, which characterizes the present implementation of commercial VUIs commonly designed around the persona of an assistant, offering a uniform interaction style across contexts. In Study 1 (N=130), metaphors were mapped to four key use-contexts-commands, information seeking, sociality, and error recovery-along the dimensions of formality and hierarchy, revealing distinct preferences for task-specific metaphorical designs. Study 2 (N=91) evaluates a Metaphor-Fluid VUI against a Default VUI, showing that the Metaphor-Fluid VUI enhances perceived intention to adopt, enjoyment, and likability by aligning better with user expectations for different contexts. However, individual differences in metaphor preferences highlight the need for personalization. These findings challenge the one-size-fits-all paradigm of VUI design and demonstrate the potential of Metaphor-Fluid Design to create more adaptive and engaging human-AI interactions.

Advances in voice technology and voice user interfaces (VUIs) -- such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Home -- have opened up the potential for many new types of interaction. However, despite the potential of these devices reflected by the growing market and body of VUI research, there is a lingering sense that the technology is still underused. In this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review of 35 papers to identify and synthesize 127 VUI design guidelines into five themes. Additionally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 smart speaker users to understand their use and non-use of the technology. From the interviews, we distill four design challenges that contribute the most to non-use. Based on their (non-)use, we identify four opportunity spaces for designers to explore such as focusing on information support while multitasking (cooking, driving, childcare, etc), incorporating users' mental models for smart speakers, and integrating calm design principles.

Each week I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too. Or maybe you had a private word with the owner or manager. My Comment: I'm often asked about how to handle negative online reviews.

Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Samsung's Bixby may be the flag bearers of voice assistants (VAs) but the technology itself is no longer limited to megacorporations. Instead, it is finding its way to numerous enterprise-level applications. Voice assistants typically found on mobile devices like Siri and Google Assistant are examples of Voice User Interfaces (VUIs). Although VUIs have existed as early as the 1950s, greater technological challenges meant that modes of communication like typing took precedence in most business implementations. A study showed that even expert typists were not faster than modern VUIs at taking down messages.

What is a Voice Interface? Ranging from Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana the use of voice-based communication through devices like a Mobile App is in demand. You might be doubtful with written instructions on the computer but the use of voice interface communication has exceeded the user rate is spreading virally like social media news. Several Google-based software assistants innovated in progress are developed as voice communicating tools falling into the category of VUIs. Voices fed in through a program are heard when a logical yes is read by the sensors which serve as a voice interface with certain devices running it.

Scanning for audible security cues is a skill we'll have to acquire in the near future--and as VUIs are becoming a more and more common interface in our daily lives, the sooner, the better. In the future, VUIs will be able to be used in situations where a human-less GUI could feel impersonal. For example, you could interact with a friendly VUI when confirming a large bank transfer or have your blood-test results read to you via a health app. But in order to interact with these products and reveal sensitive information to them, they first need to gain our trust.

Trust is important when it comes to design. Whenever we arrive at a new website or consider a product, we rely on feeling like we trust a brand in order to interact with it. Whether you trust the service or not is the difference between whether you will sign up, make an order, refer a friend, or come back for a second spin--all within a matter of a few unconscious seconds. But that's no longer the only place we look for trust. The graphic user interfaces (GUIs) you use to interact with websites are slowly being complemented or replaced entirely by voice user interfaces (VUIs), such as personal-assistant bots.

A few years ago, Facebook basically forced most of its users to adopt the Messenger application (although, not for people who use the Facebook paper app,). After announcing its intention to build Chatbots into the message platform, Zuckerburg and company seem to be making good on the promise that Messenger would provide a new platform that users will find useful. Much of Facebook's F8 and Google's I/O conference focused on how AI happening inside of a conversation might reshape how we interact with our devices. This trend has been called conversational UI, cognitive learning, and smart chatbots. I prefer the term coined on Relay.FM's Presentable podcast, the V.U.I. or voice user interface.