Designing Chatbots for Crises: A Case Study Contrasting Potential and Reality

Chatbots are becoming ubiquitous technologies, and their popularity and adoption are rapidly spreading. The potential of chatbots in engaging people with digital services is fully recognised. However, the reputation of this technology with regards to usefulness and real impact remains rather questionable. Studies that evaluate how people perceive and utilise chatbots are generally lacking. During the last Kenyan elections, we deployed a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to help people submit reports of violence and misconduct experienced in the polling stations. Even though the chatbot was visited by more than 3,000 times, there was a clear mismatch between the users’ perception of the technology and its design. In this paper, we analyse the user interactions and content generated through this application and discuss the challenges and directions for designing more effective chatbots

Observing the observer : experiences with contextual inquiry to design a horse rider assessment interface

Current approaches to the postural assessment of horse riders is highly subjective, with a lack of consistency between practitioners. A technology based solution would remove the human perspective and enable a more consistent, accurate and objective assessment to be carried out. This paper provides preliminary insights on the use of a customised method based on contextual inquiry for gathering contextual data in an unusual, in the wild context. This will be used to determine a standardised data collection protocol and contextspecific interface design for an inertial motion sensor based rider assessment tool