How households engage with digital voice assistants in everyday family life

Digital voice assistants (DVAs), combining intelligent personal assistants with smart speakers, are having a renewed uptake in domestic computing driven by technological advances and increasing personal use. However, it is still not well understood how people interact with them as part of everyday family life. This paper provides an empirical understanding of how DVAs are being perceived and used in a household context. Contributing to the body of knowledge on human–computer interaction with digital assistants in everyday life, we report on findings from interviews with nine householders on their interactions with their DVAs at home. Our findings, organised around the analytical themes of integration, functionality, exploration and interactivity, demonstrate how people perceive and interact with their DVA throughout the day. Drawn from this data, we contribute a framework encapsulating how families interact with DVAs and how DVAs can become an integral part of a functioning and fun household. We discuss HCI implications for designing future DVAs that embrace and fulfil being a part of family life.