A Preliminary Evaluation of the Usability of a Human Computer Debate Dialogue Model

This paper reports ongoing research concerning issues in the development of an intelligent debating system. The motivation behind such development is that it can be used to develop students’ reasoning and debating skills. We consider the assessment of the underlying dialogue model of the system, means of design and implementation of a computational prototype to facilitate human computer debate, and means of preliminary evaluation of the prototype and the dialogue model. Results from a heuristic evaluation of the prototype suggest that it is easy to use, but that its handling of commitment stores and some aspects of the underlying logic need attention.