research-article

What Can You Do?: Studying Social-Agent Orientation and Agent Proactive Interactions with an Agent for Employees

Authors:

Michael Muller,

N. Sadat ShamiAuthors Info & Claims

DIS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems

Pages 264 - 275

https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901842

Published: 04 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Personal agent software is now in daily use in personal devices and in some organizational settings. While many advocate an agent sociality design paradigm that incorporates human-like features and social dialogues, it is unclear whether this is a good match for professionals who seek productivity instead of leisurely use. We conducted a 17-day field study of a prototype of a personal AI agent that helps employees find work-related information. Using log data, surveys, and interviews, we found individual differences in the preference for humanized social interactions (social-agent orientation), which led to different user needs and requirements for agent design. We also explored the effect of agent proactive interactions and found that they carried the risk of interruption, especially for users who were generally averse to interruptions at work. Further, we found that user differences in social-agent orientation and aversion to agent proactive interactions can be inferred from behavioral signals. Our results inform research into social agent design, proactive agent interaction, and personalization of AI agents.

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Index Terms

What Can You Do?: Studying Social-Agent Orientation and Agent Proactive Interactions with an Agent for Employees
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

DIS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems

June 2016

1374 pages

ISBN:9781450340311

DOI:10.1145/2901790

General Chair:
Marcus Foth
Queensland University of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Wendy Ju
Stanford University
,
Ronald Schroeter
Queensland University of Technology
,
Stephen Viller
University of Queensland

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

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Published: 04 June 2016

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DIS '16: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2016

June 4 - 8, 2016

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https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-1503-3.ch001
Sun JHuang YHuang XZhang JZhang H(2024)Effect of Proactive Interaction on Trust in Autonomous VehiclesSustainability10.3390/su1608340416:8(3404)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/su16083404
Do HBrachman MDugan CJohnson JLauer JRai PPan Q(2024)Grounding with Structure: Exploring Design Variations of Grounded Human-AI Collaboration in a Natural Language InterfaceProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869028:CSCW2(1-27)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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