Using speech to search: comparing built-in and ambient speech search in terms of privacy and user experience (regular paper)

While voice assistants are on the rise for a variety of applications, talking to the television still feels less natural to users than talking to their friends or neighbours. Subtle differences how and when a voice assistant is activated seem to influence the overall perception of users in terms of user experience, control and acceptance of such an interactive system. To investigate the influence of using speech to search for content with an ambient voice assistant,compared to a more traditional solution with a microphone in a remote control, an experimental study was performed. Fourteen participants took part in a within-subject experiment comparing an ambient speech interaction with speech search using a remote control with a dedicated button to activate the microphone in terms of:privacy, usability and user experience. Results indicate a slightly higher impression of control for the button-based speech search modality, as well as fewer privacy concerns by the users for the button-based speech search modality. In terms of user experience, the hands-free ambient speech search does not perform significantly better than the traditional button-based speech search approach.