We are happy to announce a new Live Talk in the UI-Engineering Live Talks series. Live talks are bimonthly webinars given by a group member or by an invited expert. Group members will participate in the online meetings, while the live stream on YouTube will be publicly available.
For the second episode of the series, prof. Jürgen Ziegler will introduce us to the issues of designing and engineering conversational recommender systems. The talk will be given on the 20th of July, 15:30 CET.
The link to attend is the following: https://www.youtube.com/live/VnVRr9ef8wk?feature=share
Design and engineering issues in conversational recommender systems
Conversational interaction techniques have gained significant traction in recent years, mainly due to the advances in language technologies. In line with these developments, conversational recommender systems (CRS) have also been gaining increasing attention. In contrast to conventional recommender techniques they afford a higher level of flexibility and user control and are especially helpful in cold-start situations.
The talk will elaborate several relevant design and engineering issues for CRS, starting with the question how written interaction with a CRS can be made more efficient and flexible by making use of GUI-elements and by integrating it closely with search and filtering techniques. CRS can elicit user preferences and provide recommendations, but they can also explain them. I will present some insights from a study investigating explanatory needs of users in a CRS. Finally, I will introduce the novel concept of meta-intents which represent high-level dialog-related user preferences that can be instrumental in designing and adapting user-system conversations more effectively.
Short bio
Jürgen Ziegler is a senior full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen where he directs the research group on interactive intelligent systems. His main research interests lie in the areas of human-computer interaction, human-AI cooperation, recommender systems, and explainable AI. Among numerous other scientific functions, he has been founding and long-term editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interactive Media and is currently chair of the German special interest group on user-centered artificial intelligence.