Can Voice Assistants Sound Cute? Towards a Model of Kawaii
Vocalics
Katie Seaborn

Tokyo Institute of Technology
seaborn.k.aa@m.titech.ac.jp

Julia Keckeis

TU Berlin
j.keckeis.official@gmail.com

ABSTRACTThe Japanese notion of “kawaii” or expressions of cuteness, vulnerability, and/or charm is a global cultural export. Work has exploredkawaii-ness as a design feature and factor of user experience in thevisual appearance, nonverbal behaviour, and sound of robots andvirtual characters. In this initial work, we consider whether voices
can be kawaii by exploring the vocal qualities of voice assistantspeech, i.e., kawaii vocalics. Drawing from an age-inclusive modelof kawaii, we ran a user perceptions study on the kawaii-ness ofyounger- and older-sounding Japanese computer voices. We foundthat kawaii-ness intersected with perceptions of gender and age, i.e.,
gender ambiguous and girlish, as well as VA features, i.e., fluency
and artificiality. We propose an initial model of kawaii vocalics to
be validated through the identification and study of vocal qualities,
cognitive appraisals, behavioural responses, and affective reports.

CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction(HCI); Empirical studies in HCI; Human computer interaction (HCI);Interaction devices; Sound-based input / output; • Social and professional topics → User characteristics; Cultural characteristics.

KEYWORDS
Kawaii, voice assistants, kawaii vocalics, vocalics, voice UX, cuteness, user experience
ACM Reference Format:
Katie Seaborn, Somang Nam, Julia Keckeis, and Tatsuya Itagaki. 2023. Can
Voice Assistants Sound Cute? Towards a Model of Kawaii Vocalics. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New
York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585656

1

INTRODUCTION

When we think of Japanese culture, we often think of cute andcharming characters—mascots and characters from anime, manga,
video games, and other mass media. The impressions of cuteness,
charm, sweetness, and adorableness that these characters invoke is
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CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany© 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9422-2/23/04.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585656

Somang Nam

Toronto Metropolitan University
somang.nam@torontomu.ca

Tatsuya Itagaki

Tokyo Institute of Technology
itagaki.t.ad@m.titech.ac.jp
called “kawaii” in Japanese [9, 16, 18, 25, 29, 30, 34]. The aestheticof kawaii can be found across an array of media, from Pikachu andother “pocket monsters” in the Pokémon video game and anime
series to the titular transmedia character Hello Kitty and friends
licensed by Sanrio, found embedded within products ranging fromtoys to stationary to household items to theme parks. Kawaii as an
attribute of agents (human or not) and objects is typically linked
to visual appearance, static or animated [9, 16, 30, 34], but may beportrayed through other modalities, as well.
Indeed, researchers working in human-computer interaction(HCI), human-robot interaction (HRI), and human-agent interaction(HAI) have started exploring the “kawaii-ness” of interactive agentsthat feature a range of modalities and communicative capacities.
So far, robots, virtual characters, and artificial agents have taken
centre stage, with most focusing on visual appearance [4–6, 9, 30]
but emerging work on movement and nonverbal behaviours [48],nonverbal sounds and melodies [9, 51], touch [35], conduct [24, 27],and voice [24]. This shift towards exploring nonvisual modes of
expressing kawaii in interactive agents echoes an increase in HCI
work on voice-based agents without a visible or perceivable body[43]. Voice assistants (VAs), in particular, have experienced a surge
in popularity commercially as well as within HCI and adjacentspaces [1, 10, 12, 17, 43]. Since most VAs take the form of a smart
speaker, i.e., LINE’s Clova or Amazon’s Alexa, a speaker embedded
within a space, i.e., smart vehicles, and/or an abstract visualization,i.e., Apple’s Siri, sound may be the best or only medium throughwhich kawaii can be expressed. Yet, this is virtually unexplored.
The phenomenon of “cuteness” and kawaii was first approached
as an object of study [19, 31, 34] by drawing on Lorenz’s notion of“Kindchenschema” or “baby schema” [23]. This refers to the visualproperties of young animals that are theorized to stimulate a care
response: a large head and eyes compared to the body, roundness
and softness in shape and texture. Kawaii is also said to carry gendered associations that intersect with age: that it is a girl’s thing[16] and/or a socially constructed ideal of femininity as vulnerable, unthreatening, compliant, and immature [47]. Still, Nittono
and colleagues [29–33, 35] uncovered limitations in operationalizing kawaii as baby schema and gendered within the Japanesesociocultural context: objects without anthropomorphic characteristics, such as flowers, dessert, and accessories, were also perceived
as kawaii. These findings were organized into a two-layer modelof kawaii: social value and emotion [29]. Kawaii was also distinguished from “cuteness” based on agedness, with smiling older
adults deemed kawaii [29, 31, 32]. This is not unprecedented; as

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

Shiokawa wrote over two decades ago, kawaii can describe “likablepersonal quirks in not-so-young folks, especially the elderly” (p.
93). Qualitative work recently captured this under the term “otonakawaii” or “adult-cute” to explain the social acceptance of cutebehaviour in older people [22]. This raises the question of whether
the agelessness and genderlessness of kawaii applies to voice or isonly a matter of body and behaviour.
In this preliminary work, we used the two-layer model of kawaii[29] to explore kawaii in the voice of bodyless interactive agents, i.e.,
VAs. We asked: RQ1. Can computer voice invoke a sense of kawaii inthe absence of visual indicators and the presence of anthropomorphic
cues? And RQ2. Does computer voice agedness and genderedness affect perceptions of kawaii? To this end, we carried out an initial user
perceptions study of kawaii in the vocal qualities of a range of simulated VAs. We contribute initial findings on kawaii voice, diverging
from the “agelessness” findings for visual stimuli [29, 31, 32] andproviding nuance on perceptions of gender as an intersection withage in kawaii voices, expanding the purview of the social layer toinclude social identity. We also identify the VA features of fluency
and artificiality as influential. We provide a preliminary model forlaunching a new area of study within the VA domain: kawaii vocalics. We offer this work as a first step towards recognizing andunderstanding what voice qualities invoke a sense of kawaii.

2 RELATED WORK
2.1 Kawaii Vocalics? Vocal Qualities ofComputer Voice
Kawaii is typically operationalized as a visual and/or physical property, i.e., a matter of appearance that can be visually perceived.
Yet, there is no reason to limit kawaii to being a visual phenomenon, especially given how it intersects with and may rely on othermodalities, such as sound. Indeed, we raise this possibility as a key
driver of this work and seek to extend the notion of kawaii to theauditory modality as a sound- (or voice-)based stimulus.
Vocalics, or the paralinguistic qualities of voice, refer to “meta”
vocal qualities beyond words, such pitch, volume, rate of speech,
verbal fillers, and timbre, that convey information beyond speech
content, notably emotion, personality, and social qualities, suchas gender and age [38]. A variety of vocal qualities have been
explored in computer voice over the past several decades [10, 43, 46].
Yet, kawaii voice is virtually unexplored. Cheok [9] found thathigh-pitched melodies were rated as most kawaii. Lv et al. [24]explored “cute” voices for VAs by demarcating cuteness as toneof voice, i.e., vocalics, and language style, i.e., speech patterns,
finding that a combination of the two was rated most cute. Zhang
et al. [51] found a preference for quiet and cute-sounding, highpitched consequential sounds for an industrial robot arm. Kumagai[20] found that sounds produced when we touch our lips together,i.e., bilabial sounds, were associated with kawaii. The dearth ofwork on kawaii vocalics may be surprising, especially considering
Japan’s culture of singing voice synthesizers, notably Hatsune Miku
(2000), a Vocaloid software “voicebank” created by Crypton Future
Media. Yet, the consensus is that humanlikeness is a key ingredient[3, 10, 43]. This leads us to our first hypothesis, that:
H1. Perceptions of kawaii voice will depend on perceptions of low artificiality and high anthropomorphism.

Katie Seaborn et al.

2.2

Operationalizing Kawaii as a Sociocultural
Phenomenon

Kawaii is not a new concept within the cultural landscape of Japan.
Its origins are somewhat unclear, with roots in the 11th century novels of “Genji monogatari” (“The Tale of Genji”) by Lady Murasaki[47] and “Makura no sōshi” (“Pillow Book”) by Sei Shonagon [16].
Etymologically, it emerged through a combination of different linguistic sources, from a phrase for blushing to the morphemes for“dazzling” as well as “embarrassment” or “awkwardness” [47]. Lady
Murasaki, for instance, used the word to refer to the pitiable, helpless nature of certain characters to invoke a sense of sympathy in thereader, a meaning that was eventually adopted in the term kawaisō
[47]. Kawaii was carried forward into the Edo period (1600s-1800s)
by Kabuki performers and novelists and reinvigorated in the lastcentury by cultural trends, like girl’s writing [9], and mass media,
especially manga (comic) artists and animators, notably Harada
Osamu, Yuko Shimizu, and Rune Naito, and companies like Sanrio[9, 16]. Still, its flavour has changed over time. Shiokawa deconstructs kawaii as a mere descriptor of cuteness or piteousness, arguing that it is an ever-shifting, liminal construct, purposefully vague
and ill-defined so as to fit individual circumstances and modes of
expression [47]. This is part of the appeal of kawaii: not being tied
to uncontrollable factors, like the face we are born with, allows
it to be adopted by anyone. Indeed, kawaii may best be understood in terms of what qualities it does not invoke, i.e., lack of athreat response. Inuhiko notes that the juxtaposition of “piteousness” against impressions of cuteness and charm also invokes asentiment of the grotesque [16]. We may at first be surprised by
Sailor Moon’s gigantic eyes, but over time we come to view thesefeatures positively.
Nittono and colleagues [28, 29, 31–33] recognized that, as a sociocultural phenomenon, kawaii could also be viewed as a psychological phenomenon. After a series of foundational studies involving
Japanese and non-Japanese people [33] and people of all ages andgenders [28, 32], Nittono discovered that this liminal, shifting, andsomewhat contradictory notion of kawaii set it apart from othercultural notions of cuteness and called into question dominant understandings of its nature to Japanese people [29]. One layer isemotion, specifically positive affective responses elicited by kawaii
stimuli. The other layer is social value, referring to kawaii as a
medium of sociality. For example, “kawaii spirals” are where akawaii stimulus leads to reciprocal smiles and positive emotions
among two or more people [29].
Notably, the role of social identity factors, like age and gender,
are absent from this model. Yet, how kawaii has been historicallyconceptualized and studied suggests that we should. We seek toextend the social layer to accommodate perceptions of two social
identity factors highlighted so far. The first is age. Nittono et al.
[32] found that images of older adults smiling also invoked a senseof kawaii. Lieber-Milo [22] explored the notion of “otona-kawaii”(adult-kawaii) and found that Japanese adults had heard of it orwere open to the concept. This leads us to our first hypothesis:
H2. Perceptions of voice age will not be linked to kawaii,i.e., kawaii voice is an ageless phenomenon.
As a psychological and sociocultural construct, kawaii has been
located at the intersection of age and gender, notably as a feature

Can Voice Assistants Sound Cute? Towards a Model of Kawaii Vocalics

of babies and children, but also young women [16, 47]. For thisreason, some have criticized the concept as a Confucian mode of
infantilizing women and femininity [47]. Others have been said to
dismiss the concept as a “girl’s thing” [16, 47], which itself indicatesa level of social bias. Shiokawa provocatively argues that kawaii
has been molded and reconstituted over time, especially as women
gained more power and influence in mass media [47]. Still others
have approached kawaii as gender-neutral [29, 49]. Still, kawaii has
been painted feminine in broad strokes. Thus, we consider:
H3. Perceptions of voice gender will be linked to kawaii
in terms of femininity, i.e., kawaii is gendered feminine.
We must also consider the intersections when it comes to mattersof social identity [11, 26, 37, 40]. While work on social identities in
HCI and adjacent spaces is growing—in populations [8, 21, 40] andin design materials, such as personas [26], creations [42], and underlying technologies [7]—we must go beyond analyzing multiple
factors in isolation by considering how these factors intersect inways that may be difficult or impossible to tease out. When it comesto kawaii, we may specifically expect a link between perceptionsof younger age categories and femininity. We thus hypothesize:
H4. Perceptions of voice age and gender will intersect
such that younger-sounding feminine voice perceptions
will be linked to user perceptions of kawaii, e.g., stereotype of kawaii as a girl’s phenomenon.

3

METHODS

We conducted an online user perceptions study in line with theresearch design of visual, e.g., [31, 32], and voice-based, e.g., [2, 3],user perception studies. This study was folded into a larger study
about user perceptions of computer voice age. Our protocol was
registered before data collection on December 22nd , 2022 via OSF1 .

3.1

ParticipantsParticipants (n=94, women n=53, men n=37, another gender or
N/A n=4) were recruited through Yahoo! Crowdsourcing Japanon December 23rd , 2022. Most were aged 45-54 (n=34) or 35-44(n=29), with some younger (18-34 n=15) and older (55-74 n=13).
While most were non-users of VAs (n=58), many were daily or
weekly users (n=25). Four used VAs once a month and four used
to but did not anymore. Six responses were removed because they
were incomplete. Participants were paid in accordance with theparticipant pool at roughly 1200 yen per hour, equating to about
400 yen for 20 minutes.

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

3.3

Materials

3.3.1 Voice Stimuli. We used eleven voices from CoeFont2 , a Japanese TTS provider: 林アナ, よろこひ おし さん, 田斗司夫, 小夜SAYO[𝛽], なな9, 怒るおし さん, 高 俊, あさのゆき, 淑江おは あちゃん, けんしん, and さくら. We also used three novel
Japanese older adult TTSs: an older woman, an older man with alower-pitched voice, and an older man with a higher-pitched voice;clips are in Supplementary Materials. Pilot tests indicated that thevoices carried attributes related to a range of ages and genders,potentially varying perceptions of kawaii-ness by these factors.
3.3.2 Speech Content. We drew inspiration from the scripts by
Baird et al. [3], translating three phrases into Japanese: “Thank you”
as ありがとうございます, “How are you?” as おげんきですか,and “I love you” asあなたをしています.

3.4

Measures and Instruments

All instruments used a 5-point Likert scale. Item order was randomized for each voice to avoid order effects [41]. All items weretranslated into Japanese by a native speaker and back-translatedwith an advanced speaker native in English.
3.4.1 Kawaii Perceptions. We included one item simply asking fora rating of kawaii-ness. We operationalize kawaii-ness as a mean
greater than 3.5 (skewed towards agreement on kawaii-ness) and amedian of 4 or above (nominal agreement).
3.4.2 Perceptions of Anthropomorphism/Humanlikeness, Artificiality, and Fluency. We used the 1-item humanlikeness scale from Bairdet al. [3], dividing the poles (humanlike and artificial) into separate
items to match the structure of the other items in the survey. We
also asked about language fluency as a potential confounding variable for anthropomorphism, given the differing technical quality of
the TTSs we used [43, 50].
3.4.3 Age Perceptions. Agedness was captured in a nominal scale
comprised of infant/baby (0-2 years), child (3-12 years), teenaged(13-19 years), adult (20-39 years), middle-aged (40-64 years), older
adult (65+ years), and ageless.
3.4.4 Gender Perceptions. Genderedness captured in a nominal
scale comprised of feminine, masculine, aspects of both, and neither,with the last two operationalized as gender ambiguous. Participants
were also free to enter another option or description.

3.5

Data Analysis

Participants listened to short (10-15-sec.) clips of computer voices
simulating utterances by VAs; refer to 3.3. They rated these voicestimuli based on vocal and social qualities; refer to 3.4. They were
presented in a random order to counter novelty and order effects[41]. Participants provided demographics on the last page. The
study took about 20 min.

We created descriptive statistics for each voice as well as voices
grouped by perceived age (younger, middle, older) and gender (masculine, feminine, ambiguous). Shapiro-Wilks tests showed nonnormal distributions, so we used non-parametric statistics, e.g.,
Chi-squares, Kruskal-Wallis H tests, and Kendall’s tau-b correlations. Qualitative data, e.g., gender descriptions, were summarizedusing a conventional content analysis approach [14] by the third
author and checked by the first author; we had no disagreements.

1 https://osf.io/eb7zx

2 https://CoeFont.cloud

3.2

Procedure

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

4

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics showed that several voices were perceived
as kawaii: the “teenaged girl”小夜_SAYO[𝛽] (M=3.6, SD=1, MD=4,
IQR=1); the “young girl”なな(M=3.9, SD=0.9, MD=4, IQR=0); the“young boy”け ん し ん(M=3.7, SD=0.9, MD=4, IQR=1); and the“young girl’さくら(M=3.7, SD=0.8, MD=4, IQR=1). We now consider the hypotheses and qualitative findings.

4.1

H1. Perceptions of kawaii voice will depend
on low artificiality and highanthropomorphism.

A strong, negative correlation was found between Artificial and
Humanlike ratings (𝜏b = -.640, p < .05). A weak, positive correlation
was found between Kawaii and Humanlike ratings (𝜏b = .052, p <.05). A positive, moderate correlation was found between Humanlike and Fluent ratings (𝜏b = .456, p <.05) and a negative, moderatecorrelation was found between Artificial and Fluent ratings (𝜏b =-.354, p < .05). No others were found. Overall, these statisticallysignificant correlations and their directions support the hypothesis:
kawaii voices are the most fluent, humanlike and least artificial.

Katie Seaborn et al.

4.4

Chi-Square tests found a significant relationship between Perceived
Age and Kawaii rating for feminine voices, 𝜒2(16, 561) = 273.01, p <.05, masculine voices, 𝜒2(16, 607) = 423.11, p < .05, and ambiguous
voices, 𝜒2(16, 134) = 81.05, p < .05. A Kruskal-Wallis test revealed
the same for Perceived Gender, 𝜒2(2) = 308.078, p < 0.05, with aDunn’s test (Bonferroni corrected) showing significant differences
for all Perceived Genders. Similarly, a Kruskal-Wallis test for voice
and gender classifications revealed significant differences in Kawaii
ratings, 𝜒2(6) = 723.255, p < .05. A Dunn’s test using a Bonferroni
correction indicated this for all pairs except for masculine adultfeminine older adult and feminine child-feminine teen: feminine
child (M=3.8, SD=.9, MD=4, IQR=1), feminine teen (M=3.6, SD=1.0,
MD=4, IQR=1), feminine adult (M=3.0, SD=.9, MD=3, IQR=1), masculine adult (M=2.0, SD=.8, MD=2, IQR=1), feminine older adult(M=1.9, SD=.8, MD=2, IQR=1.3), masculine middle-aged (M=1.6,
SD=.7, MD=1, IQR=1), masculine older adult (M=1.5, SD=.7, MD=1,
IQR=1). We can partially accept the hypothesis, i.e., the stereotype
of a girl’s phenomenon, but also for gender ambiguity.

4.5
4.2

H2. Perceptions of voice age will not belinked to kawaii.

A moderate, negative correlation was found between Perceived Ageand Kawaii ratings (𝜏b = -.547, p < .01). A Chi-Square test found asignificant relationship between Perceived Age and Kawaii ratings,
𝜒2(16, 1308) = 720.91, p < .05, 𝜑 = .372. A Kruskal-Wallis test indicated a significant difference by age category, 𝜒2(5) = 635.16, p <.05, with a Dunn’s test (Bonferroni corrected) revealing significant
differences across all categories except for two combinations: middle aged-older adult, and child-teen: child (M=3.8, SD=.9, MD=4,
IQR=1), teen (M=3.6, SD=1, MD=4, IQR=1), adult (M=2.5, SD=1,
MD=2, IQR=1), middle-aged (M=1.6, SD=.7, MD=1, IQR=1), andolder adult (M=1.7, SD=.8, MD=1, IQR=1). Thus, we cannot accept
the hypothesis; kawaii appears to be an age-based phenomenon,
linked to voice age and favouring youth.

4.3

H3. Perceptions of voice gender will belinked to kawaii in terms of femininity.

A Chi-Square test found a statistically significant association between Perceived Gender and Kawaii ratings, 𝜒2(8, 1307) = 337.19,
p < .05, 𝜑 = .359. Follow-up Chi-Square tests (Bonferroni corrected)
showed relationships between Perceived Gender and Kawaii ratings
for all categories: both (M=3.4, SD=1.2, MD=4, IQR=1.8), feminine(M=3, SD=1.2, MD=3, IQR=2), and masculine (M=1.9, SD=1, MD=2,
IQR=1), p < .05. No voice was classified as gender ambiguous acrossparticipants. A Mann-Whitney U test indicated that feminine voices(MD=3, IQR=2) were more kawaii than masculine ones (MD=2,
IQR=1), U = 73926, p < .05. We can partially accept the hypothesis:
people who rated voices as feminine and people who rated voices
as gender ambiguous tended to provide higher ratings of kawaii.

H4. Perceptions of voice age and gender willintersect: younger-sounding feminine
voices and kawaii.

Qualitative Insights

Out of 94 participants, 29 (30.9%) provided qualitative comments
on at least one voice. Only the “teenaged girl” voice 小夜_SAYO[𝛽](n=2), the “woman” voice 林 ア ナ(n=1), and the “young girl”
voiceなな(n=1) were characterized as kawaii; notably, the “woman”
voice 林アナwas not otherwise rated as kawaii (M=3.1, SD=0.9,
MD=3, IQR=1). All voices were assigned a range of descriptors
related to anthropomorphism, including these three voices. For
example, the “teenaged girl” voice 小夜_SAYO[𝛽] was describedas “very cute” but also “somewhat fake” and “like a synthesizedvoice.” This suggests that perceptions of voice artificiality mediated,
especially dampened perceptions of kawaii.

5 DISCUSSION
5.1 User Perceptions of Kawaii Vocalics: Girlish,
Gender-Ambiguous, and Anthropomorphic
Kawaii voice perceptions appear to relate not just to social behaviour [29] or pitch and/or speech [9, 20, 24, 51], but also anthropomorphic stimuli “hearable” in the voice, specifically the expected[9, 47] social categories of age and gender. Even so, we found an
unexpected result: the most kawaii-sounding voices were thoseperceived by individuals as gender ambiguous, having a mix of feminine and masculine qualities. This may be explained by Shiokawa’s[47] conception of kawaii as ambiguous and interpreted by individuals. Machines can also have qualities of gender neutrality [44]and complex gender ascriptions [45]. In contrast to previous work[32], kawaii voice does appear to be linked to perceptions of youth,
with no suggestion of agelessness or otona-kawaii [22]. Cognitive
appraisals from the qualitative findings confirm this for our corpus.
We thus offer a preliminary model of kawaii vocalics (Figure 1). We
extend the two-layer model [29] to include the social identity characteristics of age and gender and the VA characteristics of fluency
and anthropomorphism.

Can Voice Assistants Sound Cute? Towards a Model of Kawaii Vocalics

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

Figure 1: Preliminary model of kawaii vocalics based on of the two-layer model with social identity and VA extensions.

5.2

Implications: A Research Agenda for Kawaii
Vocalics

Our preliminary results provide a solid foundation for an emerging
model of kawaii vocalics, one that complements and extends its
visual origins. We outline the following trajectories for launchingits study within voice UX research.
5.2.1 Translating Visual Kawaii Attributes to Vocal Attributes.
Translating the visual properties of kawaii to kawaii vocalics may
be a simple one-to-one translation of visual to vocal attributes. In
effect, this is as a matter of sound symbolism [13] in the context ofvoice, e.g., are auditory stimuli “round” or “fluffy”? Are attributes
such as “bright” and “lovely” perceived through sound? We canrefer to work on the cross-cultural bouba-kiki effect [39], where
people map the same shapes onto sounds. Since we perceive sounds
as “soft” and “round” before conscious awareness [15], we can accept these attributes for nonvisual stimuli. Future work can explore
rating studies that elicit perceptions with scales or qualitative input
using the list of visual kawaii attributes to start.
5.2.2 Imagining Novel Qualities Specific to Kawaii Vocalics. We alsoneed to explore new attributes that are voice-specific. Vision andaudition are distinct modalities. Kawaii vocalics may, therefore, feature unique attributes that may not be perceived in visual stimuli.
For example, supplementary nonverbal kawaii sounds, like beeps
and chortles, and sounds produced or recorded using bilabial mechanisms, for which Kumagai provides a starter list [20]. Exploratory
work, such as qualitative perception studies, may elucidate this andseed future measures and instruments for kawaii vocalics, a crucial
issue in voice UX work generally [46].
5.2.3 Mapping out Kawaii Voice Personas. Kawaii is a multifaceted
concept, with a variety of “flavours” available, including “kimo” orscary kawaii, “shy” and “confident” kawaii [49], Harajuku “street
fashion” kawaii [36], and more. Future work can uncover the“flavours” of kawaii vocalics, especially ones that map onto certain
roles or contexts of use for VAs, i.e., personas for kawaii vocalics.
5.2.4 Investigating Multimodality in Kawaii Voice and Speech.
Speech is the “what” of voice: the content expressed through voice
as the aural medium. The relationship between voice and speech
may therefore be important. If what we say is not deemed “kawaii,”
than will the voice not sound kawaii, even if it otherwise deemedas such? Future work can explore a variety of scripts and gibberish[2, 3] to tease this out.
5.2.5 Exploring Multimodality in Kawaii Voice and Body. Voice andbody are intertwined [43]. Unlike Nittono and colleagues, whofound a novel kawaii reaction to images of older adults smiling[29], we could not link kawaii to our older adult voices. This may
be a limitation of the corpus, or it may signal that the body is key.
The results for humanlikeness/artificiality suggest that a humanoidappearance may be important. Indeed, Hatsune Miku and othersuch voice-based characters may be as much about the visuals as
the voice, which are experienced as a unit. Separating the voicefrom the body is one way to isolate what aspects invoke a senseof kawaii. This can be tested out in comparative, controlled workwith, e.g., abstract Siri-like embodiments.
5.2.6 Probing Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Kawaii Voices: Are
Kawaii Voices “Cute” Voices? We did not have the bandwidth orresources to explore cross-cultural perceptions. However, previous
work [5, 6, 18, 20, 49] indicates that kawaii vocalics may vary acrosscultural and language groups, which deserves study.

5.3

Limitations

As a first effort, we were limited by the number of participants, thelack of measures for kawaii vocalics, and the simulated environment(e.g., no embodied and interactive VA). Our methodology did notallow us to observe reactions, such as emotional expressions, also alimitation of previous work, e.g., [29, 33]. The generalizability ofthese results beyond the Japanese context and language, as well as
the TTS’s used, will need to be explored in future work.

6

CONCLUSION

Kawaii is a transcultural phenomenon that is not only an expressionof “cuteness” in visual appearance, but also an auditory property,
an aspect of the vocal qualities of computer voice. Moreover, kawaii
vocalics carry sociocultural implications related to age, gender, andtheir intersection. We have proposed an initial model of kawaii
vocalics that includes gender and age as intersectional factors. We
hope this work can act as a launching pad for further validation ofthis model and the exploration of other social and affective factors
in kawaii vocalics.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was funded by a Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Early Career Scientists (KAKENHI
WAKATE) grant (no. 21K18005). It was funded in part by a Tokyo
Tech Young Investigator Engineering Award, the Tokyo Tech Young
Science and Engineering Researchers Program (YSEP), and JASSO(Japan Student Services Organization). We also thank the Fonobono
Research Institute, Li “Rikaku” Ge, and all members of the Aspire
Lab for supporting this work.

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

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