How May I Interrupt? Linguistic-Driven Design Guidelines for Proactive in-Car Voice Assistants

<p>Voice assistants (VAs) are predicted to develop from merely reactive to increasingly proactive agents in the future. While proactivity allows a leap towards more intelligent conversations with VAs, designing proactive agents is not straightforward, as benefit and acceptance of proactive behavior is dependent on a plethora of factors. For instance, proactive agents run the risk of disrupting users who are already engaged in ongoing primary tasks. While a large body of research is therefore concerned with <i>when</i> to proactively interrupt users, <i>how</i> to interrupt them has received less attention. To close this gap, a driving simulator study was conducted to find linguistic best practices for designing proactive prompts in German. Low linguistic complexity as well as suggestive rather than imposing language were found to influence study participants’ preferences for proactive prompts. These findings underline that the existing framework for designing proactive interactions needs to be enhanced by nuanced linguistic considerations.</p>