A conversational agent as facilitator

Guiding groups through collaboration processes

authored by

Navid Tavanapour, Daphne Theodorakopoulos, Eva A.C. Bittner

Abstract

Till now, conversational agents (CA) are often utilized as assistants to answer FAQs, but can they also be involved in other tasks with humans such as guiding them through a process as a group? We cooperate with an editorial office of an online journal and conduct an action design research project to instantiate a CA to facilitate their meetings. We design and develop the digital collaboration process (CP) of the meeting and a CA facilitator based on IBM Watson to integrate it in the digital environment to execute the CP. We conduct a pilot study and expert interviews to evaluate the CP and the derived design principles to facilitate the group during it and through its thinkLets. Our results show positive perception of the CA’s capability as a facilitator for a group within its limitations and its neutrality during group discussions perceived as one strengths compared to human facilitators.

External Organisation(s)

Universität Hamburg

Type

Conference contribution

Pages

108-129

No. of pages

22

Publication date

10.07.2020

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Theoretical Computer Science, Computer Science(all)

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50506-6_9 (Access: Closed)