A Framework for Developing Conversational User Interfaces

In this work we report our efforts to facilitate the creation of mixed-initiative conversational interfaces for novice and experienced developers of human language technology. Our focus has been on a framework that allows developers to easily specify the basic concepts of their applications, and rapidly prototype conversational interfaces for a variety of configurations. In this paper we describe the current knowledge representation, the compilation processes for speech understanding, generation, and dialogue turn management, as well as the user interfaces created for novice users and more experienced developers. Finally, we report our experiences with several user groups in which developers used this framework to prototype a variety of conversational interfaces.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CADUI
• Authors: James R. Glass, Eugene Weinstein, D. Scott Cyphers, Joseph Polifroni, Grace Chung, Mikio Nakano
• Keywords: CADUI 2004, Conversational Interfaces, Experienced Developers, Mixed-initiative Conversational Interfaces, User Interface