Comic-boarding with Children: Understanding the use of Language in Human-Human and Human-Agent Dialogue

The intersection of language and identity refers to the ways in which language use reflects and shapes one's sense of self and group membership. It is important to design voice-based technologies that represent and support diverse types of identities to increase accessibility. Due to constraints in the data and algorithms used to train and improve artificial intelligence (AI) systems like social robots or voice assistants, they are often unable to represent certain dialects of English and other languages. This could result in data bias, identity exclusion, and communication barriers that can impact the user's outcomes when using such dialects. Technology companies are discussing how to close this gap by improving training data; however, some researchers believe that the intersection of identity and technology calls for effective collaborative design methodologies that involve intended users. This work-in-progress paper presents preliminary findings on a participatory design method, comic-boarding, that can accomplish the above goal. Using comic-boarding, our intention is to create a space for critical reflection on language and identity in human-human and human-agent dialogue for children from marginalized communities.