Understanding Conversational Usage Patterns between English and Hindi

Conversational agents have exploded in popularity over the past three years around the world. This paper focuses on Amazon’s conversational agent, Alexa. Usage of conversational agents reached India four years ago and got adopted by the country with the Hindi speaking skills. This paper presents two studies researching the working of this conversational agent in English and in Hindi and the behavioral differences between the two. In the first study, we conducted basic surveys and interviews to obtain and understand the mental model of users. The device we used was Amazon Echo Dot third generation. For the second study, we gathered thirty-two participants who belong to different regions of India and had them interact with the device. We found interesting revelations about the working of the conversational agent, Alexa. We conclude with suggestions for improvements in future designs or redesigns of the product.