Towards Personalization of Spoken Dialogue System Communication Strategies

Abstract

This study examines the effects of 3 conversational traits - Register, Explicitness, and Misunderstandings - on user satisfaction and the perception of specific subjective features for Virtual Home Assistant spoken dialogue systems. Eight different system profiles were created, each representing a different combination of these 3 traits. We then utilized a novel Wizard of Oz data collection tool and recruited participants who interacted with the 8 different system profiles, and then rated the systems on 7 subjective features. Surprisingly, we found that systems which made errors were preferred overall, with the statistical analysis revealing error-prone systems were rated higher than systems which made no errors for all 7 of the subjective features rated. There were also some interesting interaction effects between the 3 conversational traits, such as implicit confirmations being preferred for systems employing a "conversational" Register, while explicit confirmations were preferred for systems employing a "formal" Register, even though there was no overall main effect for Explicitness. This experimental framework offers a fine-grained approach to the evaluation of user satisfaction which looks towards the personalization of communication strategies for spoken dialogue systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2020
Accession Number
AD1154311

Entities

People

  • Carla Gordon
  • David R Traum
  • Killirroi Georgila
  • Volodymyr Yanov

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Analysis Of Variance
  • Animals
  • Computers
  • Data Science
  • Dialogue Systems
  • Electronic Mail
  • Environment
  • Errors
  • Experimental Design
  • Information Science
  • Internet
  • Internet Of Things
  • Lagomorphs
  • Language
  • Natural Languages
  • Perception
  • Personality
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Washers (Cleaners)

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Instructional Design and Training Evaluation.
  • Organizational Psychology.