The Interaction of Discourse Modality and User Expectations in Human-Computer Dialog

Sammanfattning: This study discusses the behavior of people towards natural language interfaces. It draws parallels to the behavior of people towards other people, and discusses how far these parallels can be stretched. A small experimental study of users performing tasks using a natural language interface to a database is presented, and the results related to the discussion.The main points made are1) that new modalities like the one used in typical human computer interaction - written interactive communication - are problematic for new users, from lack of conventions; and2) that users' attitudes towards computers and of the system's linguistic and other competence shape much of the interaction, and that these attitudes change, and that thus the important factor to take into account in system design is not what the initial attitudes are but rather what the process of changing them is and how to utilize the process of change to teach the user the system language and interaction modality.