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How can we better understand the mechanisms behind multi-turn information seeking dialogues? How can we use these insights to design a dialogue system that does not require explicit query formulation upfront as in question answering? To…
Wizard of Oz (WoZ) as a prototyping method has been used to simulate intelligent user interfaces, particularly for speech-based systems. However, as our societies' expectations on artificial intelligence (AI) grows, the question remains…
Conversational information seeking (CIS) is playing an increasingly important role in connecting people to information. Due to the lack of suitable resource, previous studies on CIS are limited to the study of theoretical/conceptual…
Chatbots have garnered interest as conversational interfaces for a variety of tasks. While general design guidelines exist for chatbot interfaces, little work explores analytical chatbots that support conversing with data. We explore…
Conversational search applications offer the prospect of improved user experience in information seeking via agent support. However, it is not clear how searchers will respond to this mode of engagement, in comparison to a conventional…
Optimization is as much about modeling the right problem as solving it. Identifying the right objectives, constraints, and trade-offs demands extensive interaction between researchers and stakeholders. Large language models can empower…
Traditional search methods primarily depend on string matches, while semantic search targets concept-based matches by recognizing underlying intents and contextual meanings of search terms. Semantic search is particularly beneficial for…
We propose a unified Implicit Dialog framework for goal-oriented, information seeking tasks of Conversational Search applications. It aims to enable dialog interactions with domain data without replying on explicitly encoded the rules but…
Virtual Assistant technology is rapidly proliferating to improve productivity in a variety of tasks. While several virtual assistants for everyday tasks are well-known (e.g., Siri, Cortana, Alexa), assistants for specialty tasks such as…
In enterprise organizations, data-driven decision making processes include the use of business intelligence dashboards and collaborative deliberation on communication platforms such as Slack. However, apart from those in data analyst roles,…
In conversational search, agents can interact with users by asking clarifying questions to increase their chance to find better results. Many recent works and shared tasks in both NLP and IR communities have focused on identifying the need…
This paper discusses the potential for creating academic resources (tools, data, and evaluation approaches) to support research in conversational search, by focusing on realistic information needs and conversational interactions.…
In order to enhance levels of engagement with conversational systems, our long term research goal seeks to monitor the confusion state of a user and adapt dialogue policies in response to such user confusion states. To this end, in this…
This article presents the Cogni-CISMeF project, which aims at improving the health information search engine CISMeF, by including a conversational agent that interacts with the user in natural language. To study the cognitive processes…
We explore the potential for productive team-based collaboration between humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) by presenting and conducting initial tests with a general framework that enables multiple human and AI agents to work together…
Designing protocols enhancing cooperation for multi-agent systems remains a grand challenge. Cheap talk, defined as costless, non-binding communication before formal action, serves as a pivotal solution. However, existing theoretical…
Instruments such as eye-tracking devices have contributed to understanding how users interact with screen-based search engines. However, user-system interactions in audio-only channels -- as is the case for Spoken Conversational Search…
Large corpora of task-based and open-domain conversational dialogues are hugely valuable in the field of data-driven dialogue systems. Crowdsourcing platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, have been an effective method for collecting…
Development of task guidance systems for aiding humans in a situated task remains a challenging problem. The role of search (information retrieval) and conversational systems for task guidance has immense potential to help the task…
Intelligent dialogue systems are increasingly used in modern education and psychological counseling fields, but most existing systems are limited to a single domain, cannot deal with both educational and psychological issues, and often lack…