How to Design the Perfect Prompt: A Linguistic Approach to Prompt Design in Automotive Voice Assistants – An Exploratory Study

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In-vehicle voice user interfaces (VUIs) are becoming increasingly popular while needing to handle more and more complex functions. While many guidelines exist in terms of dialog design, a methodical and encompassing approach to prompt design is absent in the scientific landscape. The present work closes this gap by providing such an approach in form of linguistic-centered research. By extracting syntactical, lexical, and grammatical parameters from a German contemporary grammar, we examine how their respective manifestations affect users’ perception of a given system output across different prompt types. Through exploratory studies with a total of 1,206 participants, we provide concrete best practices to optimize and refine the design of VUI prompts. Based on these best practices, three superordinate user needs regarding prompt design can be identified: a) a suitable level of (in)formality, b) a suitable level of complexity/simplicity, and c) a suitable level of (im)mediacy.