Application of Text Analytics in Public Service Co-Creation: Literature Review and Research Framework

The public sector faces several challenges, such as a number of external and internal demands for change, citizens' dissatisfaction and frustration with public sector organizations, that need to be addressed. An alternative to the traditional top-down development of public services is co-creation of public services. Co-creation promotes collaboration between stakeholders with the aim to create better public services and achieve public values. At the same time, data analytics has been fuelled by the availability of immense amounts of textual data. Whilst both co-creation and TA have been used in the private sector, we study existing works on the application of Text Analytics (TA) techniques on text data to support public service co-creation. We systematically review 75 of the 979 papers that focus directly or indirectly on the application of TA in the context of public service development. In our review, we analyze the TA techniques, the public service they support, public value outcomes, and the co-creation phase they are used in. Our findings indicate that the TA implementation for co-creation is still in its early stages and thus still limited. Our research framework promotes the concept and stimulates the strengthening of the role of Text Analytics techniques to support public sector organisations and their use of co-creation process. From policy-makers' and public administration managers' standpoints, our findings and the proposed research framework can be used as a guideline in developing a strategy for the designing co-created and user-centred public services

Factors affecting value co-creation through artificial intelligence in tourism-a general literature review

Purpose This is a general review study aiming to specify the key customer-based factors and technologies that influence the value co-creation (VCC) process through artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in the hospitality and tourism industry. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a theory-based general literature review approach to explore key customer-based factors and technologies influencing VCC in the tourism industry. By reviewing the relevant literature, the authors conclude a theoretical framework postulating the determinants of VCC in the AI-driven tourism industry. Findings This paper identifies customers' perceptions, attitudes, trust, social influence, hedonic motivations, anthropomorphism and prior experience as customer-based factors to VCC through the use of AI. Service robots, AI-enabled self-service kiosks, chatbots, metaversal tourism and new reality, machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) are technologies that influence VCC. Research limitations/implications The results of this research inform a theoretical framework articulating the human and AI elements for future research set to expand the models predicting VCC in the tourism industry. Originality/value Few studies have examined consumer-related factors that influence their participation in the VCC process through automation and AI

Automation of Customer Initiated Back Office Processes: A Design Science Research Approach to link Robotic Process Automation and Chatbots

While the emerging technology of robotic process automation is primarily suitable for back office processes, companies use traditional chatbots to support customer interaction in the front office. However, customer requests that require more than written information usually demand an employee to execute an internal process. This paper summarizes the results of a technical design process for a combination of both technologies. After an introduction on both topics, the findings of a literature review regarding existing approaches are outlined. The development of the IT artefact is then carried out according to the design science research methodology. In particular, the research focuses on the constitution of a design theory in consideration of criteria that are found to be important for a purposeful appearance to the external user. After a proof of concept by testing the developed artefact and a summary of the results, an outlook on possible future developments is provided

The Last Decade of HCI Research on Children and Voice-based Conversational Agents

Voice-based Conversational Agents (CAs) are increasingly being used by children. Through a review of 38 research papers, this work maps trends, themes, and methods of empirical research on children and CAs in HCI research over the last decade. A thematic analysis of the research found that work in this domain focuses on seven key topics: ascribing human-like qualities to CAs, CAs’ support of children’s learning, the use and role of CAs in the home and family context, CAs’ support of children’s play, children’s storytelling with CA, issues concerning the collection of information revealed by CAs, and CAs designed for children with differing abilities. Based on our findings, we identify the needs to account for children's intersectional identities and linguistic and cultural diversity and theories from multiple disciples in the design of CAs, develop heuristics for child-centric interaction with CAs, to investigate implications of CAs on social cognition and interpersonal relationships, and to examine and design for multi-party interactions with CAs for different domains and contexts

Towards structured neural spoken dialogue modelling.

195 p.In this thesis, we try to alleviate some of the weaknesses of the current approaches to dialogue modelling,one of the most challenging areas of Artificial Intelligence. We target three different types of dialogues(open-domain, task-oriented and coaching sessions), and use mainly machine learning algorithms to traindialogue models. One challenge of open-domain chatbots is their lack of response variety, which can betackled using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We present two methodological contributions inthis regard. On the one hand, we develop a method to circumvent the non-differentiability of textprocessingGANs. On the other hand, we extend the conventional task of discriminators, which oftenoperate at a single response level, to the batch level. Meanwhile, two crucial aspects of task-orientedsystems are their understanding capabilities because they need to correctly interpret what the user islooking for and their constraints), and the dialogue strategy. We propose a simple yet powerful way toimprove spoken understanding and adapt the dialogue strategy by explicitly processing the user's speechsignal through audio-processing transformer neural networks. Finally, coaching dialogues shareproperties of open-domain and task-oriented dialogues. They are somehow task-oriented but, there is norush to complete the task, and it is more important to calmly converse to make the users aware of theirown problems. In this context, we describe our collaboration in the EMPATHIC project, where a VirtualCoach capable of carrying out coaching dialogues about nutrition was built, using a modular SpokenDialogue System. Second, we model such dialogues with an end-to-end system based on TransferLearning

The Experience of Conversation and Relation with a Well-Being Chabot: Between Proximity and Remoteness

The article concerns the users’ experiences of interacting with well-being chatbots. The text shows how chatbots can act as virtual companions and, to some extent, therapists for people in their daily reality. It also reflects on why individuals choose such a form of support for their well-being, concerning, among others, the stigmatization aspect of mental health problems. The article discusses and compares various dimensions of users’ interactions with three popular chatbots: Wysa, Woebot, and Replika. The text both refers to the results of research on the well-being chatbots and, analytically, engages in a dialogue with the results discussed in the form of sociological (and philosophical) reflection. The issues taken up in the paper include an in-depth reflection on the aspects of the relationship between humans and chatbots that allow users to establish an emotional bond with their virtual companions. In addition, the consideration addresses the issue of a user’s sense of alienation when interacting with a virtual companion, as well as the problem of anxieties and dilemmas people may experience therein. In the context of alienation, the article also attempts to conceptualize that theme concerning available conceptual resources

Listening to the Voices: Describing Ethical Caveats of Conversational User Interfaces According to Experts and Frequent Users

Advances in natural language processing and understanding have led to a rapid growth in the popularity of conversational user interfaces (CUIs). While CUIs introduce novel benefits, they also yield risks that may exploit people's trust. Although research looking at unethical design deployed through graphical user interfaces (GUIs) established a thorough understanding of so-called dark patterns, there is a need to continue this discourse within the CUI community to understand potentially problematic interactions. Addressing this gap, we interviewed 27 participants from three cohorts: researchers, practitioners, and frequent users of CUIs. Applying thematic analysis, we construct five themes reflecting each cohort's insights about ethical design challenges and introduce the CUI Expectation Cycle, bridging system capabilities and user expectations while considering each theme's ethical caveats. This research aims to inform future development of CUIs to consider ethical constraints while adopting a human-centred approach.Comment: 18 pages; 4 tables; and 1 figure. This is the author's version and pre-print of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record will be published in Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24), May 11--16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.364254