COSPO/CENDI Industry Day Conference

The conference's objective was to provide a forum where government information managers and industry information technology experts could have an open exchange and discuss their respective needs and compare them to the available, or soon to be available, solutions. Technical summaries and points of contact are provided for the following sessions: secure products, protocols, and encryption; information providers; electronic document management and publishing; information indexing, discovery, and retrieval (IIDR); automated language translators; IIDR - natural language capabilities; IIDR - advanced technologies; IIDR - distributed heterogeneous and large database support; and communications - speed, bandwidth, and wireless

An adaptive environment for personal information management

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This dissertation reports the results of research into the provision of adaptive user interfaces to support individuals in the management of their personal information. Many individuals find that they have increased responsibility for managing aspects of their own lives, including the information associated with their jobs. In contrast with traditional approaches to information management, which are generally driven by organisational or business requirements, the requirements of personal information management systems tend to be less rigidly defined. This dissertation employs research from the areas of personal information management and adaptive user interfaces - systems which can monitor how they are used, and adapt on a personal level to their user - to address some of the particular requirements of personal information management systems. An adaptive user interface can be implemented using a variety of techniques, and this dissertation draws on research from the area of software agents to suggest that reactive software agents can be fruitfully applied to realise the required adaptivity. The reactive approach is then used in the specification and development of an adaptive interface which supports simple elements of personal information management tasks. The resulting application is evaluated by means of user trials and a usability inspection, and the theoretical architectures and techniques used in the specification and development of the software are critically appraised. The dissertation demonstrates an application of reactive software agents in adaptive systems design and shows how the behaviour of the system can be specified based on the analysis of some representative personal information management tasks.EPSRC (Award Reference Number 95700906

Customisable chatbot as a research instrument

Abstract. Chatbots are proliferating rapidly online for a variety of different purposes. This thesis presents a customisable chatbot that was designed and developed as a research instrument for online customer interaction research. The developed chatbot facilitates creation of different bot personas, data management tools, and a fully functional online chat user interface. Customer-facing bots in the system are rulebased, with basic input processing and text response selection based on best match. The system uses its own database to store user-chatbot dialogue history. Further, bots can be assigned unique dialogue scripts and their profiles can be customised concerning name, description and profile image. In the presented validation studies, participants completed a task by taking part in a conversation with different bots, as hosted by the system and invoked through distinct URL parameters. Second, the participants filled in a questionnaire on their experience with the bot, designed to reveal differences in how the bots were perceived. Our results suggest that the chatbot’s personality impacted how customers experienced the interactions. Therefore, the developed system can facilitate research scenarios that deal with investigating participant responses to different chatbot personas. Future work is necessary for a wider range of applications and enhanced response control.Personoitava chatbot tutkimustyökaluna. Tiivistelmä. Chatbotit yleistyvät nopeasti Internetissä ja niitä käytetään enenevissä määrin useissa eri käyttötarkoituksissa. Tämä diplomityö esittelee personoitavan chatbotin, joka on kehitetty tutkimustyökaluksi verkon yli tapahtuvaan vuorovaikutustutkimukseen. Kehitetty chatbot sisältää erilaisten bottipersoonien luonnin, apuvälineitä datan käsittelyn, ja itse botin käyttöliittymän. Järjestelmän käyttäjille vastailevat bottipersoonat ovat sääntöihin perustuvia, niiden syötteet käsitellään suoraviivaisesti ja vastaukseksi valitaan vertailun mukaan paras ennaltamääritellyn skriptin mukaisesti. Järjestelmä käyttää omaa tietokantaa tallentamaan käyttäjä-botti keskusteluhistorian. Lisäksi boteille voidaan asettaa uniikki dialogimalli, ja niiden profiilista voidaan personoida URL-parametrillä nimi, botin kuvaus ja profiilikuva. Chatbotin tekninen toiminta todettiin tutkimuksella, jossa osallistujat suorittivat annetun tehtävän seuraamalla osittain valmista käsikirjoitusta eri bottien kanssa. Tämän jälkeen osallistujat täyttivät käyttäjäkyselyn liittyen heidän kokemukseensa botin kanssa. Kysely oli suunniteltu paljastamaan mahdolliset eroavaisuudet siinä, kuinka botin käyttäytyminen miellettiin keskustelun aikana. Käyttäjätestin tulokset viittaavat siihen, että chatbotin persoonalla oli vaikutus käyttäjien kokemukseen. Kehitetty järjestelmä siis pystyy mahdollistamaan tutkimusasetelmia, joissa tutkitaan osallistujien reaktioita erilaisten chattibottien persooniin. Jatkotyö kehitetyn chatbotin yhteydessä keskittyy monimutkaisempien käyttötarkoitusten lisäämiseen ja botin vastausten parantamiseen edistyksellisemmän luonnollisen kielen käsittelyn avulla

A data-driven approach to spoken dialog segmentation

In This Paper, We Present A Statistical Model For Spoken Dialog Segmentation That Decides The Current Phase Of The Dialog By Means Of An Automatic Classification Process. We Have Applied Our Proposal To Three Practical Conversational Systems Acting In Different Domains. The Results Of The Evaluation Show That Is Possible To Attain High Accuracy Rates In Dialog Segmentation When Using Different Sources Of Information To Represent The User Input. Our Results Indicate How The Module Proposed Can Also Improve Dialog Management By Selecting Better System Answers. The Statistical Model Developed With Human-Machine Dialog Corpora Has Been Applied In One Of Our Experiments To Human-Human Conversations And Provides A Good Baseline As Well As Insights In The Model Limitation

An intelligent user interface model for contact centre operations

Contact Centres (CCs) are at the forefront of interaction between an organisation and its customers. Currently, 17 percent of all inbound calls are not resolved on the first call by the first agent attending to that call. This is due to the inability of the contact centre agents (CCAs) to diagnose customer queries and find adequate solutions in an effective and efficient manner. The aim of this research is to develop an intelligent user interface (IUI) model to support and improve CC operations. A literature review of existing IUI architectures, modelbased design and existing CC software together with a field study of CCs has resulted in the design of an IUI model for CCs. The proposed IUI model is described in terms of its architecture, component-level design and interface design. An IUI prototype has been developed as a proof of concept of the proposed IUI model. The IUI prototype was evaluated in order to determine to what extent it supports problem identification and query resolution. User testing, incorporating the use of eye tracking and a post-test questionnaire, was used in order to determine the usability and usefulness of the prototype. The results of this evaluation show that the users were highly satisfied with the task support and query resolution assistance provided by the IUI prototype. This research resulted in the design of an IUI model for the domain of CCs. This model can be used to assist the development of CC applications incorporating IUIs. Use of the proposed IUI model is expected to support and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of CC operations. Further research is needed to conduct a longitudinal study to determine the impact of IUIs in the CC domain

Special Libraries, Summer 1992

Volume 83, Issue 3https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1992/1002/thumbnail.jp