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What Makes a Good Conversation? Challenges in Designing Truly Conversational Agents
Date Issued
2019-05-09
Date Available
2019-05-07T10:37:05Z
Abstract
Conversational agents promise conversational interaction but fail to deliver. Efforts often emulate functional rules from human speech, without considering key characteristics that conversation must encapsulate. Given its potential in supporting long-term human-agent relationships, it is paramount that HCI focuses efforts on delivering this promise. We aim to understand what people value in conversation and how this should manifest in agents. Findings from a series of semi-structured interviews show people make a clear dichotomy between social and functional roles of conversation, emphasising the long-term dynamics of bond and trust along with the importance of context and relationship stage in the types of conversations they have. People fundamentally questioned the need for bond and common ground in agent communication, shifting to more utilitarian definitions of conversational qualities. Drawing on these findings we discuss key challenges for conversational agent design, most notably the need to redefine the design parameters for conversational agent interaction.
Sponsorship
Irish Research Council
Type of Material
Conference Publication
Publisher
ACM
Copyright (Published Version)
2019 the Authors
Web versions
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Conference Details
The 2019 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019) Glasgow, United Kingdom, 4-9 May 2019
ISBN
978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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