SecondVoice Lets Hesitant Participants Speak Through a Virtual Proxy

Summary

Researchers present SecondVoice, a mixed-reality system that lets hesitant participants contribute to live discussions through an embodied virtual proxy. Users privately specify an intent, which the system reformulates and voices into the conversation. In a 16-person preliminary study, half of participants used SecondVoice for a point they would not have said aloud, versus 18.8% with an anonymous text board. Proxy contributions entered the spoken floor and prompted multi-turn engagement, while participants also identified concerns about timing, ownership, and trust in reformulation.