A mobile voice search client for European Portuguese

The generalization of speech technology availability notable in simple mobility scenarios, such as searching the Internet using the user´s voice or “voice search”, has increased user awareness of the usefulness of this human-computer interaction modality. In this paper, we present a mobile voice search client that accepts a generic spo ken query and presents the search engine’s result page using European Portuguese.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Anticipating Information Needs Based on Check-in Activity

In this work we address the development of a smart personal assistant that is capable of anticipating a user's information needs based on a novel type of context: the person's activity inferred from her check-in records on a location-based social network. Our main contribution is a method that translates a check-in activity into an information need, which is in turn addressed with an appropriate information card. This task is challenging because of the large number of possible activities and related information needs, which need to be addressed in a mobile dashboard that is limited in size. Our approach considers each possible activity that might follow after the last (and already finished) activity, and selects the top information cards such that they maximize the likelihood of satisfying the user's information needs for all possible future scenarios. The proposed models also incorporate knowledge about the temporal dynamics of information needs. Using a combination of historical check-in data and manual assessments collected via crowdsourcing, we show experimentally the effectiveness of our approach.Comment: Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM '17), 201

Hey Siri!: A Study of Everyday Information Seeking Among Frequent Users of Intelligent Personal Assistants.

This study used diaries and interviews to examine everyday information seeking behaviors among a group of frequent users of intelligent personal assistants. All participants completed diaries and met for a brief interview following the completion of their diaries. Diary responses captured real life examples of intelligent personal assistant usage, while interviews focused on general perceptions of intelligent personal assistants. Participants frequently used their intelligent personal assistants to find factual information but often expressed reluctance to ask assistants questions that would be difficult for the assistants to answer well. Many assistant uses were for repetitive and frequent types of information needs. Participants expressed mixed opinions about the appropriateness of intelligent personal assistant use in social situations. Some, though not all, of the findings of this study confirm the findings of other research in the growing body of research on intelligent personal assistants.Master of Science in Information Scienc

A USABILITY STUDY OF THE INTELLIGENT ASSISTANT FOR SENIOR CITIZENS TO SEEK HEALTH INFORMATION

This research study expands earlier works on the usability performance of multimodal intelligent assistants in the field of health information search by senior citizens. Intelligent assistants are able to bring the health information search to an advanced level by having conversations and touch interactions with the device instead of text-based searching engine. It is important to have usability evaluation of system and device to push the design and development of the information search and retrieval experience to be better. With the growth of the market and user need in the field of multimodal intelligent personal assistants, it is absolutely necessary to conduct research to understand the performance of the current system and figure out the present weaknesses and direction for future improvements.Bachelor of Scienc