Shaping conversations : Investigating how conversational agents are designed and developed

Abstract: Conversational agents are becoming increasingly common in our day to day lives. We can speak to our phones, our cars and our smart home devices. Despite these advances, the current conversational agents are still far from perfect. The complexities of language as well as the technologies that are used to enable conversational agents pose many challenges to the people designing and developing them. This study aims to bring light to how practitioners design and develop conversational agents that exist out there today. Interviews were conducted with 11 practitioners that have been creating conversational agents for various industries and use cases. The results show that practitioners face a range of challenges when creating conversational agents, including collecting data about the target users during the design process as well as integrating the conversational agent with other systems. The study suggests that practitioners may benefit from involving users early on in the design process. It also advocates for HCI educators to prepare future graduates for designing conversational agents, through training them in human conversation and communication. This study gives insights into how conversational agents are built today, the processes that are followed and the challenges that are faced by the people creating them.