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Tama: Designing a gaze-aware smart speaker platform

Time: Tue 2019-06-18 15.15

Location: Fantum (Lindstedtsvägen 24, floor 5, room no. 522)

Participating: Profs. Barry Brown and Donald McMillan, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm Uni.

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Abstract:
Recent developments in gaze tracking presents new opportunities for
social computing. For this talk we will present Tama, a gaze actuated
smart speaker. Tama was designed taking advantage of research on gaze in
conversation. Rather than being activated with a wake word (such as "Ok
Google") Tama detects the gaze of a user, moving an articulated 'head'
to achieve mutual gaze. We tested Tama's use in a multi-party
conversation task, with users successfully activating and receiving a
response to over 371 queries (over 10 trials). When Tama worked well
there was no significant difference in length of interaction. However,
interactions with Tama had a higher rate of repeated queries, causing
longer interactions overall. Video analysis lets us explain the problems
users had interacting with gaze. In discussion we describe how
anthropomorphism can be used in the design of interaction, and provide
implications for designing new gaze systems.