Preferences for Single-Turn vs. Multiturn Voice Dialogs in Automotive Use Cases—Results of an Interactive User Survey in Germany

Voice assistants have manifested their existence in the vehicle over the last decade. Further technological developments in the area of voice recognition and interactions with users open up the opportunity for new customer-centric user scenarios. In the following work, eight dialog use cases and two different interaction types were examined in detail. The focus of this work is to answer the research question to which extent do users prefer task-oriented multi-turn dialogs over the question-and-answer single-turn dialogs in certain driving situations. Employing a three-step online survey in 2020, participants were asked about their preferences for the assistant’s interaction type, use case as well as the perceived usefulness and pleasantness. The authors found that users preferred multi-turn conversations over single-turn conversations for all defined use case scenarios. As further challenges for the future development of voice assistants in the automotive context, the changed driving situation due to e.g. progress in autonomous driving and the focus on an integration of the voice modality as a direct function should be considered.