Alexa, We Need to Talk: A Data Literacy Approach on Voice Assistants

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Voice assistants (VA) collect data about users’ daily life including interactions with other connected devices, musical preferences, and unintended interactions. While users appreciate the convenience of VAs, their understanding and expectations of data collection by vendors are often vague and incomplete. By making the collected data explorable for consumers, our research-through-design approach seeks to unveil design resources for fostering data literacy and help users in making better informed decisions regarding their use of VAs. In this paper, we present the design of an interactive prototype that visualizes the conversations with VAs on a timeline and provides end users with basic means to engage with data, for instance allowing for filtering and categorization. Based on an evaluation with eleven households, our paper provides insights on how users reflect upon their data trails and presents design guidelines for supporting data literacy of consumers in the context of VAs.