Project
Can voice assistants acting a co-workers help improve spoken English?
For an internship project, I designed voice interfaces acting as co-workers to help non-native speakers of English practice their speaking skills in a contextually appropriate workplace environment.
Description
Through my internship project at ETS (Educational Testing Service) AI Labs, I had the opportunity to design conversational agents for non-native English speakers in India with low proficiency, aimed at assisting them in enhancing their speaking abilities in a non-judgmental environment. In this pursuit, I identified the primary challenges faced by Indian job seekers, including fear of judgment and lack of confidence due to inadequate knowledge of formal English. To address these obstacles, I developed two conversational agents – one with a friendly and amicable personality to act as a co-worker, and another with a formal and professional persona to serve as a mentor. The designed conversational agents enabled users to practice both types of English skills, empowering them to build confidence in their communication abilities. Moreover, I conducted semi-structured interviews and co-designing sessions to comprehend the ideal co-worker and mentor persona as envisioned by the users, thereby ensuring the system was tailored to user preferences for increased realism. The results indicated that the conversational agents were user-friendly and effectively assisted the participants in developing confidence in their English-speaking abilities.
Method
- Usability Testing
- Semi-structured interviews
- Co-design
Analysis
- Thematic analysis
- Statistical analysis
Participants
6 job-seeking Indians between the ages of 18-21
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Conversation