Designing Personalized and Situated Conversational AI in Urban Public Space

Abstract

Conversational AI has largely evolved within private, device centered environments that assume stable attention and extended engagement. When such systems enter shared urban space, these assumptions break down. This paper analyzes a real world intervention at COEX, now GangnamEyes, in Seoul, where a digital character named Lee Sol appears on a large media facade and invites passersby to initiate a mobile conversation through a QR code. The facade establishes a visible public AI presence, while each visitor privately engages in a short, five turn session on their smartphone. Presence is shared; interaction is individualized and time constrained. The project introduces a hybrid interaction model in which AI visibility and AI dialogue are spatially decoupled. Mobility, environmental noise, economic limits, and institutional goals shaped a constrained conversational architecture that favored tap based progression and minimal situational personalization over open ended dialogue. While this structure supported legibility and flow in a high density setting, it also exposed limitations in durational continuity and agent identity. The paper argues that contextual framing must guide conversational AI in shared environments. Meaningful spatial presence depends on clearly defining an agent’s scope and temporal role rather than expanding conversational capability alone.

Keywords: Spatial AI Presence, Hybrid Interaction Model, Conversational Agents, Human Centered Design, Contextual Framing

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007632