Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents

Alisha Pradhan; Amanda Lazar

doi:10.1145/3469595.3469607

Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents

Alisha Pradhan, Amanda Lazar

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Conversational agents designed to interact through natural language are often imbued with human-like personalities. At times, the agent might also have a distinct persona with traits such as gender, age, or a backstory. Designing such personality or persona for conversational agents has become a common design practice. In this work, we review the emerging literature on designing agent persona or personality, and reflect on these approaches, along with the personas that are created for common conversational agents. We discuss open questions with regards to three aspects: meeting user needs, the ethics of deception, and reinforcing social stereotypes through conversational agents. We hope this work can provoke researchers and practitioners to critically reflect on their approach for designing personality or persona of conversational agents.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450389983
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3469595.3469607
State	Published - Jul 27 2021
Externally published	Yes
Event	3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021 - Virtual, Online, Spain Duration: Jul 27 2021 → Jul 29 2021

Publication series

Name	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference	3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021
Country/Territory	Spain
City	Virtual, Online
Period	7/27/21 → 7/29/21

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Software
Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computer Networks and Communications

Keywords

Conversational agents
persona
personality
voice assistants

Access to Document

10.1145/3469595.3469607

Cite this

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title = "Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents",

abstract = "Conversational agents designed to interact through natural language are often imbued with human-like personalities. At times, the agent might also have a distinct persona with traits such as gender, age, or a backstory. Designing such personality or persona for conversational agents has become a common design practice. In this work, we review the emerging literature on designing agent persona or personality, and reflect on these approaches, along with the personas that are created for common conversational agents. We discuss open questions with regards to three aspects: meeting user needs, the ethics of deception, and reinforcing social stereotypes through conversational agents. We hope this work can provoke researchers and practitioners to critically reflect on their approach for designing personality or persona of conversational agents.",

keywords = "Conversational agents, persona, personality, voice assistants",

author = "Alisha Pradhan and Amanda Lazar",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 ACM.; 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021 ; Conference date: 27-07-2021 Through 29-07-2021",

year = "2021",

month = jul,

day = "27",

doi = "10.1145/3469595.3469607",

language = "English (US)",

series = "ACM International Conference Proceeding Series",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",

booktitle = "Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021",

}

Pradhan, A & Lazar, A 2021, Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents. in Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021., 12, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery, 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021, Virtual, Online, Spain, 7/27/21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3469595.3469607

Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents. / Pradhan, Alisha; Lazar, Amanda.
Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. 12 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

TY - GEN

T1 - Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents

AU - Pradhan, Alisha

AU - Lazar, Amanda

PY - 2021/7/27

Y1 - 2021/7/27

N2 - Conversational agents designed to interact through natural language are often imbued with human-like personalities. At times, the agent might also have a distinct persona with traits such as gender, age, or a backstory. Designing such personality or persona for conversational agents has become a common design practice. In this work, we review the emerging literature on designing agent persona or personality, and reflect on these approaches, along with the personas that are created for common conversational agents. We discuss open questions with regards to three aspects: meeting user needs, the ethics of deception, and reinforcing social stereotypes through conversational agents. We hope this work can provoke researchers and practitioners to critically reflect on their approach for designing personality or persona of conversational agents.

AB - Conversational agents designed to interact through natural language are often imbued with human-like personalities. At times, the agent might also have a distinct persona with traits such as gender, age, or a backstory. Designing such personality or persona for conversational agents has become a common design practice. In this work, we review the emerging literature on designing agent persona or personality, and reflect on these approaches, along with the personas that are created for common conversational agents. We discuss open questions with regards to three aspects: meeting user needs, the ethics of deception, and reinforcing social stereotypes through conversational agents. We hope this work can provoke researchers and practitioners to critically reflect on their approach for designing personality or persona of conversational agents.

KW - Conversational agents

KW - persona

KW - personality

KW - voice assistants

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M3 - Conference contribution

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T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

BT - Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

T2 - 3rd Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, CUI 2021

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ER -

Hey Google, Do You Have a Personality? Designing Personality and Personas for Conversational Agents

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this