Anna Agliardi
Personality is a fundamental requirement for conversational agents, such as chatbots and voice assistants, to foster connection, trust, engagement and satisfaction between humans and machines. This research aimed to address the gap in measuring user experience with LLMs that feature voice capabilities and are used as voice assistants. Additionally, it sought to explore how the personality of a voice assistant can influence trust, perceptions of authenticity, usage intentions and user engagement.
The Voice Assistant needs to support users in accomplishing day-to-day tasks by providing tips about sustainable living by addressing users' location, favouring multitasking, and working to build trust by delivering valuable and simple information.
This research explores how the traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness impact the user experience in the context of voice interaction.
Agreeable
The personality was described as friendly, helpful, clever and knowledgeable
The voice was pleasant to listen to, with clear accents and tone
Experience was defined as positive, interesting and helpful.
Conscientious
The voice sounded human-like, but it was evident it was not real
Voice assistant was described as competent, reliable and helpful, with a neutral and formal personality
Experience provided good information.
The usage of conversational agents, chatbots and voice assistants is rapidly increasing in several aspects of daily life. The recent technological innovation of large language models has transformed the interaction between machines and humans, enabling them to hold conversations that closely resemble human-to-human dialogue. Using voice instead of text helps users overcome some accessibility barriers. The user experience can be influenced by voice since it serves as a vehicle for conveying emotions and personality. Personality can be divided into five main traits: openness, agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, known as the five-factor model. This study focuses on analysing how different personality traits, conscientious and agreeable, can influence the user experience in relation to trust, engagement, intention to use, and perceived authenticity.
User reseach highlighted how the users are open to using the voice assistants in their day-to-day life, especially for multitasking.
Two versions of the voice assistant MyEko were designed with the conscientiousness and agreeableness traits. A conversation flow focused on sustainable topics was designed as an AI conversation agent in ElevenLabs. A usability test was conducted to compare the versions of the prototype. The results didn’t highlight any significant difference between the two traits of personalities, even though participants found the experience with the voice assistant pleasant.
I am a user experience designer working in the multidisciplinary fields of marketing and photography, with a focus on artificial intelligence and product design. Based in Berlin since 2014, my journey into user experience design followed my work in the real estate sector, where clarity and transparency were central to the business.
I advocate for accessibility standards and strive to simplify processes. My thesis explores the use of artificial intelligence combined with voice technology to create a seamless interaction between humans and machines.
