DiamondHelp: Applying Collaborative Discourse Theory to Human-Computer InteractionDr Candace Sidner Tuesday 7th February 2006 at 11am
AbstractInterfaces get more complex due to more and more features, and users get more frustrated with them. This statement applies to consumer products as well as computer interfaces. In this talk I will discuss an interface called DiamondHelp aimed at interfaces for consumer products (thermostats, DVD players, washer/driers and the like) to help users understand and use the complex and programmable features of these products. I will also discuss the underlying system Collagen, a COLLabortive AGENts middleware which models collaborative conversation and provides the reusable core of DiamondHelp. Collagen has been used by several research groups outside MERL in addition to our own projects, and I will discuss its architecture. I will also provide a live demo of DiamondHelp during my talk. Short resumeCandace L. (Candy) Sidner is an expert in user interfaces, especially those using speech, natural language understanding, and collaboration. Candy is senior research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is currently working on human-robot interaction, focused on the role of engagement in those interactions, and on interface applications involving collaborative interface agents in the COLLAGEN project. She is a Fellow and past Councilor of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, senior member of the IEEE, program cochair of IUI 2006, and a member of the scientific advisory board for the EU Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants (CoSy) project. She has served as co-chair of SIGIAL 2004, chair of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces in 2001, and President of the Association for Computational Linguistics. She received her Ph.D. from MIT in Computer Science. |