Summary:
The research background of this paper is that many conversational agents are currently emerging. For example, every major technical company has its own conversational agent. As a key mode of human-computer interaction, it has a lot of research significance, so this paper reports the results of interviews with 14 users, and finds that user expectations are very different from the ways of system operations, so the author has finished researching the feedback from these 14 users. The following conclusions were reached:
(a) Change the ways to reveal system intelligence
(b) Reconsidering the interactional promise made by humorous engagement
(c) Considering how best to indicate capability though interaction
(d) Rethinking system feedback and design goals in light of the dominant use case
In general, the functions that the conversation agent can achieve and its impact on human life are still far from people’s expectations. So it is need to be improved better on how people work and their design goals based on their needs.
Reflection:
Then I will talk about my thoughts on these suggestions:
First of all, I very much agree with the author’s suggestion, interactional promise made by humorous engagement. Based on my only interaction experience, I think that humorous interaction methods are very effective in improving user experience and making interaction commitments. I rarely use Siri, but I remember that Siri has a lot of humorous reality, and when asked a specific question, there will be relevant answers. Although this does not help much to solve the problem, it can improve the user experience, and I think that making interactive commitments in this way can also help users better understand the conversation agent, add fun to use, and improvements will make users have confidence in the conversational agent.
Secondly, I think that the other suggestions are mainly regarded as a better demonstration of the ability of conversational agents to users, which is also in line with the central idea of this paper, that is, people’s expectations are far from the goals that the system can achieve. I don’t know the true ability of the system, which leads to the continuous accumulation of disappointment of unfinished tasks, and thus gradually abandon the use of conversational agents. I think I gradually reduced the use of similar products because I thought that the operating systems I wanted to perform were difficult to meet, and in retrospect, I didn’t know what functions the system could really accomplish. So I think it is imperative that users need to really understand the system’s capabilities, use it in a correct and efficient way, and constantly improve their satisfaction in order to realize successful interactions, and then increase the use of conversational agents. At the same time, the emergence of this problem cannot be completely attributed to the user’s wrong use. Technology companies also need to better understand the needs of users, innovate interaction methods, try to change the previous way of conversation communication, broaden interaction methods, and add new features to continue to meet people’s needs.
Question:
- What is the role of those conversational agent in your life?
- What functions can be added in your mind?
- Do you think you don’t know the abilities of these conversational agent clearly?
- Do you think it might be useful to design a conversational agent follow the suggestions mentioned in this paper?
I agree that when I do not know the true abilities of a system, I tend to have lesser tolerance and eventually abandon such conversational agents.
With respect to your first question, as I am not an avid user of conversational agents, the biggest role Amazon Alexa (the conversational agent I have used the most in my life) was as a glorified alarm clock.