The Tao of CHI: Towards Effective Human-Computer Interaction

End-to-end evaluations of conversational dialogue systems with naive users are currently uncovering severe usability problems that result in low task completion rates. Preliminary analyses suggest that these problems are related to the system’s dialogue management and turntaking behavior. We present the results of experiments designed to take a detailed look at the effects of that behavior. Based on the resulting findings, we spell out a set of criteria which lie orthogonal to dialogue quality, but nevertheless constitute an integral part of a more comprehensive view on dialogue felicity as a function of dialogue quality and efficiency.