Justin Edwards

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Oulu

Socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) is a crucial process for groups of learners to successfully collaborate. Detecting and supporting SSRL is a challenge, especially in real time, but hybrid intelligence approaches such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents may make this possible. Leveraging the concept of trigger events which invite SSR...

The theory of socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) suggests that successful collaborative groups can identify and respond to trigger events stemming from cognitive or emotional obstacles in learning. Thus, to develop real-time support for SSRL, novel metrics are needed to identify different types of trigger events that invite SSRL. Our aim...

Recent work has looked to understand user perceptions of speech agent capabilities as dialogue partners (termed partner models), and how this affects user interaction. Yet, currently partner model effects are inferred from language production as no metrics are available to quantify these subjective perceptions more directly. Through three studies,...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare home care workers' views of their employment conditions by provider type – private for-profit vs public and non-profit – using the case study of Ireland. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was distributed to care workers ( n = 350) employed by private for-profit, public and non-profit home...

People form impressions of their dialogue partners, be they other people or machines, based on cues drawn from their communicative style. Recent work has suggested that the gulf between people's expectations and the reality of CUI interaction widens when these impressions are misaligned with the actual capabilities of conversational user interfaces...

Conversational User Interfaces such as Voice Assistants are hugely popular. Yet they are designed to be monolingual by default, lacking support for, or sensitivity to, the bilingual dialogue experience. In this provocation paper, we highlight the language production challenges faced in VA interaction for bilingual users. We argue that, by facilitat...

This article examines home care professionals’ views on working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, it identifies similarities and differences between private, public and non-profit providers. The article seeks to shed light on the impacts of marketisation/privatisation on working conditions during the pandemic. Statistical test...

Alexa Skills are used for a variety of daily routines and purposes, but little research has focused on a key part of many people's daily lives: their pets. We present a systematic review categorizing the purposes of 88 Alexa Skills aimed at pets and pet owners and introduce a veterinary perspective to assess their benefits and risks. We present 8 t...

This work aims to connect the Automotive User Interfaces (Auto-UI) and Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) communities through discussion of their shared view of the future of automotive conversational user interfaces. The workshop aims to encourage creative consideration of optimistic and pessimistic futures, encouraging attendees to explore the...

Video conferencing systems have long facilitated work-related conversations among remote teams. However, social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic has forced colleagues to use video conferencing platforms to additionally fulfil social needs. Social talk, or informal talk, is an important workplace practice that is used to build and maintain bo...

Current speech agent interactions are typically user-initiated, limiting the interactions they can deliver. Future functionality will require agents to be proactive, sometimes interrupting users. Little is known about how these spoken interruptions should be designed, especially in urgent interruption contexts. We look to inform design of proactive...

Chatbots are popular machine partners for task-oriented and social interactions. Human-human computer-mediated communication research has explored how people express their gender and sexuality in online social interactions, but little is known about whether and in what way chatbots do the same. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 5 text-ba...

Through proliferation on smartphones and smart speakers, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) have made speech a common interaction modality. Yet, due to linguistic coverage and varying levels of functionality, many speakers engage with IPAs using a non-native language. This may impact the mental workload and pattern of language production displa...

Language models and conversational systems are growing increasingly advanced, creating outputs that may be mistaken for humans. Consumers may thus be misled by advertising, media reports, or vagueness regarding the role of automation in the production of language. We propose a taxonomy of language automation, based on the SAE levels of driving auto...

Limited linguistic coverage for Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) means that many interact in a non-native language. Yet we know little about how IPAs currently support or hinder these users. Through native (L1) and non-native (L2) English speakers interacting with Google Assistant on a smartphone and smart speaker, we aim to understand this m...

The assumptions we make about a dialogue partner's knowledge and communicative ability (i.e. our partner models) can influence our language choices. Although similar processes may operate in human-machine dialogue, the role of design in shaping these models, and their subsequent effects on interaction are not clearly understood. Focusing on synthes...

Chatbots are popular for both task-oriented conversations and unstructured conversations with web users. Several different approaches to creating comedy and art exist across the field of computational creativity. Despite the popularity and ease of use of chatbots, there have not been any attempts by artists or comedians to use these systems for com...

Across several branches of conversational interaction research including interactions with social robots, embodied agents, and conversational assistants, users have identified trust as a critical part of those interactions. Nevertheless, there is little agreement on what trust means within these sort of interactions or how trust can be measured. In...

Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) are supposed to help us multitask. Yet the impact of IPA use on multitasking is not clearly quantified, particularly in situations where primary tasks are also language based. Using a dual task paradigm, our study observes how IPA interactions impact two different types of writing primary tasks; copying and ge...

Humanness is core to speech interface design. Yet little is known about how users conceptualise perceptions of humanness and how people define their interaction with speech interfaces through this. To map these perceptions n=21 participants held dialogues with a human and two speech interface based intelligent personal assistants, and then reflecte...

The assumptions we make about a dialogue partner's knowledge and communicative ability (i.e. our partner models) can influence our language choices. Although similar processes may operate in human-machine dialogue, the role of design in shaping these models, and their subsequent effects on interaction are not clearly understood. Focusing on synthes...

Across several branches of conversational interaction research including interactions with social robots, embodied agents, and conversational assistants, users have identified trust as a critical part of those interactions. Nevertheless, there is little agreement on what trust means within these sort of interactions or how trust can be measured. In...

Chatbots are popular for both task-oriented conversations and unstructured conversations with web users. Several different approaches to creating comedy and art exist across the field of computational creativity. Despite the popularity and ease of use of chatbots, there have not been any attempts by artists or comedians to use these systems for com...

Intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) are supposed to help us multitask. Yet the impact of IPA use on multitasking is not clearly quantified, particularly in situations where primary tasks are also language based. Using a dual task paradigm, our study observes how IPA interactions impact two different types of writing primary tasks; copying and ge...

Speech interfaces are growing in popularity. Through a review of 99 research papers this work maps the trends, themes, findings and methods of empirical research on speech interfaces in the field of human–computer interaction (HCI). We find that studies are usability/theory-focused or explore wider system experiences, evaluating Wizard of Oz, proto...

The use of speech as an interaction modality has grown considerably through the integration of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs- e.g. Siri, Google Assistant) into smartphones and voice based devices (e.g. Amazon Echo). However, there remain significant gaps in using theoretical frameworks to understand user behaviours and choices and how they...

Conversational agents promise conversational interaction but fail to deliver. Efforts often emulate functional rules from human speech, without considering key characteristics that conversation must encapsulate. Given its potential in supporting long-term human-agent relationships, it is paramount that HCI focuses efforts on delivering this promise...

Media multitasking is the increasingly ubiquitous phenomenon in which people concurrently consume content across multiple media platforms, including but not limited to smartphones, computers, and print media. For this reason, media multitasking has become a popular area of study for human-computer interaction researchers and technology developers a...