Benjamin R. Cowan

Silence and overlap in chat and chunk phases of multiparty casual conversation

2018

Casual conversation, 'talk for the sake of talking', is often multiparty, with no clear practical goal, and can last up to several hours.Longer conversations proceed in phases of chat and chunk, where chat is highly …

Toward Metaphor-Fluid Conversation Design for Voice User Interfaces

2026

Metaphors play a critical role in shaping user experiences with Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), yet existing designs rely on static, human-centric metaphors that fail to adapt to diverse contexts and user needs. We introduce Metaphor-Fluid …