Revisiting “Hole in the Wall” Computing: Private Smart Speakers and Public Slum Settings
Abstract
Millions of homes worldwide enjoy access to digital content and services through smart speakers such as Amazon's Echo and Google's Home. Promotional materials and users' own videos typically show homes that have many well-resourced rooms, with good power and data infrastructures. Over the last several years, we have been working with slum communities in India, whose dwellings are usually very compact (one or two rooms), personal home WiFi is almost unheard of, power infrastructures are far less robust, and financial resources put such smart speakers out of individual household reach. Inspired by the "hole in the wall" internet-kiosk programme, we carried out workshops with slum inhabitants to uncover issues and opportunities for providing a smart-speaker-type device in public areas and passageways. We designed and deployed a simple probe that allowed passers-by to ask and receive answers to questions. In this paper, we present the findings of this work, and a design space for such devices in these settings.
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Conversational voice assistants in the home might have the potential to provide social interaction, a goal pursued in past work on older adults largely through social robots.
“This implies that conversational voice assistants in the home might have the potential to provide social interaction, a goal pursued in past work on older adults largely through social robots [35,60].”
From "Phantom Friend" or "Just a Box with Information": Personification and Ontological Categorization of Smart Speaker-based Voice Assistants by Older Adults (2019) · cites this paper as [60]
Cites
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“[8, 9, 24, 25] deployed a PC in a “hole-in-the-wall,” allowing exploratory computer and internet use by a multitude of people who would otherwise be unable to access due to the many resource constraints mentioned above.”
BackgroundExploring the use of speech input by blind people on mobile devices
Azenkot, S., & Lee, N. B. (2013) · Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/2513383.2513440 · Cited by 151 · cited 1× · see citing works
“For example, blind or partially sighted individuals [2, 6], people with dyslexia [1], and those with mobility impairments [31] have all benefited from speech-driven developments.”
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Understanding the Long-Term Use of Smart Speaker Assistants
Bentley, F., Luvogt, C., Silverman, M., Wirasinghe, R., White, B., & Lottridge, D. (2018) · Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies · doi:10.1145/3264901 · Cited by 316 · see citing works
Use of Intelligent Voice Assistants by Older Adults with Low Technology Use
Pradhan, A., Lazar, A., & Findlater, L. (2020) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/3373759 · Cited by 285 · see citing works
Pradhan, A., Findlater, L., & Lazar, A. (2019) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3359316 · Cited by 223 · see citing works
Kim, S., & Choudhury, A. (2021) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2021.106914 · Cited by 200 · see citing works
Harrington, C. N., Garg, R., Woodward, A., & Williams, D. (2022) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3491102.3501995 · Cited by 98 · see citing works
Metaphors in Voice User Interfaces: A Slippery Fish
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Understanding User Perceptions of Proactive Smart Speakers
Wei, J., Dingler, T., & Kostakos, V. (2021) · Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies · doi:10.1145/3494965 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
An exploratory study understanding the appropriated use of voice-based Search and Assistants
Bhalla, A. (2018) · Proceedings of the 9th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3297121.3297136 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
The Use of Smart Home Speakers by the Elderly: Exploratory Analyses and Potential for Big Data
Purao, S., Hao, H., & Meng, C. (2021) · Big Data Research · doi:10.1016/j.bdr.2021.100224 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Chang, F., Sheng, L., & Gu, Z. (2024) · JMIR mHealth and uHealth · doi:10.2196/47472 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“Specifically, while research has explored smart speaker use among various demographics, such as low-income populations [8,9], people with disabilities [10,11], parents [12,13], and children [14], studies specifically focusing on the older adult demographic remain relatively scarce [3,15].”
Background
- Authors
- Robinson, S., Pearson, J., Ahire, S., Ahirwar, R., Bhikne, B., Maravi, N., & Jones, M.
- Affiliations
- Swansea University (GB)
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IN)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2018-04-21
- Pages
- 1-11
- OpenAlex
- W2779706042
- Cited by
- 37
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 3.92
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- EPSRC (EP/M00421X/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › ICT in Developing Communities
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Interactive and Immersive Displays
- Keywords
- smart speakers, slum communities, resource-limited settings, voice assistants, design space, digital inclusion, informal settlements
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