“It's More Like the Planet's Assistant”: Re-imagining Smart Speaker Designs

The increasing pervasiveness of commercially available smart speakers calls for critical design research engagement to challenge traditional notions of utility and efficiency. In this paper, we report on the design of three provotypes (prototypes to provoke thought rather than refine the design process) – the Climate Change Smart Speakers (CCSS) – and the results from a one-week real-life probe study involving three participants. The CCSS are designed to make people reflect on smart speaker design and interactions using climate crisis as a catalyst, and each has a distinct persona: the Activist, the Robot, and the Voice of the Forest. Our preliminary findings indicate that CCSS are affectively engaging artifacts that prompt critical reflections on the sociocultural roles of smart speakers and our interactions with them. Based on this, we provide future directions for more diverse voice-user interfaces (VUI) in smart speaker design.