Groupwork 1

Attitudes, Preconceptions and Practices in Conversational AI Design

How is user experience of Conversational AI impacted by the language used during design? How does concepts like “human-like”,”intelligent”, and “understanding” impact user expectations about Conversational AI?

Objective: In this groupwork, you are invited to explore the language attitudes and preconceptions used as part of conversational AI design, and their impact of user expectations and experience. The groupwork aims at discovering the connections between language concepts used in software design and development through collaborative work, and will help you understand and describe the role of language, interaction and communication in design (read the full groupwork description).

Process: During the groupwork, you will first be given an overview of key concepts such as language ideologies and attitudes. You will then be presented the results from a quesionnaire on the topic, sent out to all participants prior to the event, and have these related to findings from a chatbot platform document study. Finally, the use of language ideologies and attitiudes will be discussed to raise awareness about language attitudes and preconceptions in the process of chatbot design and create a roadmap for improvement.

Output: The groupwork output will be a set of recommendations for chatbot developers and designers on how to consider their preconceptions of language. The recommendations will enable reflection on tacit common-sense knowledge of language, to align language used in design to align with user practices and needs.

Groupwork organizers:

Sviatlana Höhn (University of Luxembourg), Bettina Migge (University Colledge Dublin, Ireland), Doris Dippold (Universtity of Surrey, UK), and Britta Schneider (European University Viadrina, Germany).