Abstract
In the human-computer interaction (HCI) practice, there have been increasing interests in systems consisting of multiple conversational agents (CAs). However, existing studies pointed out that the interactions with multiple CAs require a high level of users’ mental efforts. To cope with this issue, we introduce a mediator agent (MA): a single CA which mediates interactions between a user and multiple CAs. Although there are existing studies that imply the potential of a CA as a mediator in a multi-party context, understanding of user expectations on MA is still lacking. In this work, we conducted an improvisational acting-based Wizard of Oz study to explore user experience (UX) of MA-mediated interactions with multiple CAs. Twelve participants experienced interactions mediated by a virtual MA and interviewed about their expectations on a MA. Qualitative analysis of interview data revealed user expectations on a MA, including user-preferred types of agent-mediation such as confirmation-based mediation and transparency-oriented mediation.
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Acknowledgments
This work was mainly supported by Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No.2016-0-00564, Development of Intelligent Interaction Technology Based on Context Awareness and Human Intention Understanding), and partially supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. NRF-2021R1A2C2004263).
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Nam, H., Kim, H., Lim, Yk. (2021). User Experience of Agent-Mediated Interactions with Multiple Conversational Agents. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S. (eds) HCI International 2021 - Posters. HCII 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1419. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78635-9_61
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78635-9_61
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