"Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents

Chen Shani; Alexander Libov; Sofia Tolmach; Liane Lewin-Eytan; Yoelle Maarek; Dafna Shahaf

doi:10.1145/3491101.3519870

"Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents

Chen Shani, Alexander Libov, Sofia Tolmach, Liane Lewin-Eytan, Yoelle Maarek, Dafna Shahaf

The Rachel and Selim Benin School of Engineering and Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Conversational Agents (CAs) such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa are well-suited for task-oriented interactions ("Call Jason"), but other interaction types are often beyond their capabilities. One notable example is playful requests: for example, people ask their CAs personal questions ("What's your favorite color?") or joke with them, sometimes at their expense ("Find Nemo"). Failing to recognize playfulness causes user dissatisfaction and abandonment, destroying the precious rapport with the CA. Today, playful CA behavior is achieved through manually curated replies to hard-coded questions. We take a step towards understanding and scaling playfulness by characterizing playful opportunities. To map the problem's landscape, we draw inspiration from humor theories and analyze real user data. We present a taxonomy of playful requests and explore its prevalence in real Alexa traffic. We hope to inspire new avenues towards more human-like CAs.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	423:1-423:7
Number of pages	7
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450391566
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519870
State	Published - 27 Apr 2022
Event	2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2022 - Virtual, Online, United States Duration: 30 Apr 2022 → 5 May 2022

Publication series

Name	Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference	2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2022
Country/Territory	United States
City	Virtual, Online
Period	30/04/22 → 5/05/22

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 ACM.

Keywords

Computational Humor
Computational Playfulness
Conversational Agents
Non-Task Requests
Virtual Assistants

Access to Document

10.1145/3491101.3519870

Cite this

Shani, C., Libov, A., Tolmach, S., Lewin-Eytan, L., Maarek, Y., & Shahaf, D. (2022). "Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents. In CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 423:1-423:7). Article 423 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519870

Shani, Chen ; Libov, Alexander ; Tolmach, Sofia et al. / "Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents. CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, 2022. pp. 423:1-423:7 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings).

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abstract = "Conversational Agents (CAs) such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa are well-suited for task-oriented interactions ({"}Call Jason{"}), but other interaction types are often beyond their capabilities. One notable example is playful requests: for example, people ask their CAs personal questions ({"}What's your favorite color?{"}) or joke with them, sometimes at their expense ({"}Find Nemo{"}). Failing to recognize playfulness causes user dissatisfaction and abandonment, destroying the precious rapport with the CA. Today, playful CA behavior is achieved through manually curated replies to hard-coded questions. We take a step towards understanding and scaling playfulness by characterizing playful opportunities. To map the problem's landscape, we draw inspiration from humor theories and analyze real user data. We present a taxonomy of playful requests and explore its prevalence in real Alexa traffic. We hope to inspire new avenues towards more human-like CAs.",

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author = "Chen Shani and Alexander Libov and Sofia Tolmach and Liane Lewin-Eytan and Yoelle Maarek and Dafna Shahaf",

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Shani, C, Libov, A, Tolmach, S, Lewin-Eytan, L, Maarek, Y & Shahaf, D 2022, "Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents. in CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems., 423, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 423:1-423:7, 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2022, Virtual, Online, United States, 30/04/22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519870

"Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents. / Shani, Chen; Libov, Alexander; Tolmach, Sofia et al.
CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, 2022. p. 423:1-423:7 423 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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Shani C, Libov A, Tolmach S, Lewin-Eytan L, Maarek Y, Shahaf D. "Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents. In CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. 2022. p. 423:1-423:7. 423. (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings). doi: 10.1145/3491101.3519870

"Alexa, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" Characterizing Playful Requests to Conversational Agents

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Keywords

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