‘How should my family assistant be?’: initial perceptions about prospective and anticipated use of in-home virtual assistants in an emerging context

Virtual Assistants (VAs) are at the forefront of state-of-the-art interactions for smart technologies at home. The prospective users’ prior to use perception of such assistants is crucial to discover new possibilities for design and to be able to elicit positive user experiences. However, this has not been investigated in detail within family life in emerging contexts though demand for their ownership increases. This study scrutinises potential users’ initial perceptions about the prospective and anticipated uses of VAs within family life in Turkey, as an emerging context, through in-depth interviews with 15 families. During the interviews, the participant families watched publicly available videos of four different VAs to elicit their perceptions. Results reveal that prospective users’ perceptions and expectations focus heavily on VAs’ possible effects on the family well-being, besides the concerns about usability and issues related to privacy, safety, and security. While proposing VAs for home use in such an emerging market, their potential positive effects on the family well-being should be promoted whereas perceived negative effects should be resolved by considering smartness, personality and trust dimensions. The study reveals relationships between these dimensions and perceptions of and expectations about VA use in home context in an emerging market.