we are happy to announce the second episode of the UI-Engineering live talks, which are bimonthly seminars organised by the  IFIP WG 2.7/13.4 and given by members or invited experts.

This month, 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. 

Title: Design and engineering issues in conversational recommender systems

Speaker: Jürgen Ziegler, University of Duisburg-Essen

Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/VnVRr9ef8wk?feature=share

Abstract:

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.