• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2017

Applying the concept and components of human nature to the conversational agent in the smart home context, this study investigated the effects of the level of anthropomorphism and interaction type on the emotional user experiences and future use intention. The results of experiment study showed that the high-low condition of anthropomorphism and the voice-chatting interaction type have impacts on the perceived closeness, likability, and future use intention. That is, people evaluate the conversational agent as more close, likable, and useful when they perceive more human nature components and when in the voice interaction mode. Psychological resistance was lower in the voice than in the chatting mode regardless of the level of anthropomorphism. The results also demonstrated an interaction effect of anthropomorphism and interaction type on the future use intention: the effect of anthropomorphism existed only in the voice interaction mode. It leads to the conclusion that a conversational agent with the voice recognition interface should be designed with the higher level of human nature components for the continuous use.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.144-156
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• 2021

This study was conducted to explore important factors to consider when designing voice-based psychological counseling agents amid the increasing use of conversational agents in counseling and psychotherapy. 48 participants selected their preferred agent's voice among four types (young women and men, middle-aged women and men) and had a conversation with a psychological counseling agent. They also evaluated the reasons for voice selection, mood changes, perception of the agent's characteristics, and counseling outcomes. As a results, the agent's voice type selected according to the user's gender was not statistically significant. However, the qualitative analysis showed 'comfort' of the voice was an important factor. Next, the user's mood improved significantly after the conversation with the agent, which confirmed the intervention effect. Finally, it was found that expertness and attractiveness perceptions toward the agent contributed to the counseling outcomes. The implications of the study and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.11-22
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• 2022

Recently, research and development using various Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are being conducted in the field of education. Among the AI in Education (AIEd), conversational agents are not limited by time and space, and can learn more effectively by combining them with various AI technologies such as voice recognition and translation. This paper conducted a trend analysis on platforms that have a large number of users and used conversational agents for English learning among commercialized application. Currently commercialized educational platforms using conversational agent through trend analysis has several limitations and problems. To analyze specific problems and limitations, a comparative experiment was conducted with the latest pre-trained large-capacity dialogue model. Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA) human evaluation was conducted to evaluate conversational human-likeness. Based on the experiment, this paper propose the need for trained with large-capacity parameters dialogue models, educational data, and information retrieval functions for effective English conversation learning.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.267-286
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• 2023

The conversational agents such as AI speakers utilize voice conversation for human-computer interaction. Voice recognition errors often occur in conversational situations. Recognition errors in user utterance records can be categorized into two types. The first type is misrecognition errors, where the agent fails to recognize the user's speech entirely. The second type is misinterpretation errors, where the user's speech is recognized and services are provided, but the interpretation differs from the user's intention. Among these, misinterpretation errors require separate error detection as they are recorded as successful service interactions. In this study, various text separation methods were applied to detect misinterpretation. For each of these text separation methods, the similarity of consecutive speech pairs using word embedding and document embedding techniques, which convert words and documents into vectors. This approach goes beyond simple word-based similarity calculation to explore a new method for detecting misinterpretation errors. The research method involved utilizing real user utterance records to train and develop a detection model by applying patterns of misinterpretation error causes. The results revealed that the most significant analysis result was obtained through initial consonant extraction for detecting misinterpretation errors caused by the use of unregistered neologisms. Through comparison with other separation methods, different error types could be observed. This study has two main implications. First, for misinterpretation errors that are difficult to detect due to lack of recognition, the study proposed diverse text separation methods and found a novel method that improved performance remarkably. Second, if this is applied to conversational agents or voice recognition services requiring neologism detection, patterns of errors occurring from the voice recognition stage can be specified. The study proposed and verified that even if not categorized as errors, services can be provided according to user-desired results.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.96-104
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• 2017

As new smart devices are evolved into the intelligent agent who can reflect user intention and use context, user experience design for easy and convenient usability becomes a core competitive edge. Under the assumption that human centered natural interaction is necessary for the optimal smart TV experience, this study explores the types of voice interaction which are peculiar to TV watching context. In order to build a model for the users to naturally interact with Smart TV, conversation patterns were collected by requesting key features of Smart TV to intelligent agent. Collected sentences were applied to CfA model and classified by responses to activate features. The classified conversation patterns were divided into feature activation and information search. This study has identified that CfC1 occurred when voice interaction between Smart TV and users was vague and CfC2 occurred when the requests were complex or conditional. In conclusion, Simple Request Type is the most efficient model and voice interaction is more appropriate to use to clarify users' vague requests.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.59-70
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• 2018

With the breakthrough of speech recognition technology, conversational agents have become pervasive through smartphones and smart speakers. The recognition accuracy of speech recognition technology has developed to the level of human beings, but it still shows limitations on understanding the underlying meaning or intention of words, or understanding long conversation. Accordingly, the users experience various errors when interacting with the conversational agents, which may negatively affect the user experience. In addition, in the case of smart speakers with a voice as the main interface, the lack of feedback on system and transparency was reported as the main issue when the users using. Therefore, there is a strong need for research on how users can better understand the capability of the conversational agents and mitigate negative emotions in error situations. In this study, we applied social strategies, "forewarning" and "apology", to conversational agent and investigated how these strategies affect users' perceptions of the agent in breakdown situations. For the study, we created a series of demo videos of a user interacting with a conversational agent. After watching the demo videos, the participants were asked to evaluate how they liked and trusted the agent through an online survey. A total of 104 respondents were analyzed and found to be contrary to our expectation based on the literature study. The result showed that forewarning gave a negative impression to the user, especially the reliability of the agent. Also, apology in a breakdown situation did not affect the users' perceptions. In the following in-depth interviews, participants explained that they perceived the smart speaker as a machine rather than a human-like object, and for this reason, the social strategies did not work. These results show that the social strategies should be applied according to the perceptions that user has toward agents.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.620-631
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• 2021

The study aim to test the effect of voice agent's preceding utterance type on the user experience in the smart home contexts by conversation types. Based on two types of conversation (task-oriented vs. relationship-oriented conversations) and two types of utterance (preceding vs. response utterances), four different scenarios were designed for experimental study. A total of 62 participants were divided into two groups by utterance type, and exposed to two scenarios of the conversation types. Likeability, psychological reactance, and perceived intelligence were measured for the user experience of conversational agent. The result showed main effects of likeability in task-oriented conversations, and of psychological reactance in preceding utterances. The interaction effect demonstrated that preceding conversation improved the likeabilitty and perceived intelligence in the task-oriented conversations.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.92-101
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• 2018

As the interactive AI speaker becomes popular, voice recognition is regarded as an important vehicle-driver interaction method in case of autonomous driving situation. The purpose of this study is to confirm whether multimodal interaction in which feedback is transmitted by auditory and visual mode of AI characters on screen is more effective in user experience optimization than auditory mode only. We performed the interaction tasks for the music selection and adjustment through the AI speaker while driving to the experiment participant and measured the information and system quality, presence, the perceived usefulness and ease of use, and the continuance intention. As a result of analysis, the multimodal effect of visual characters was not shown in most user experience factors, and the effect was not shown in the intention of continuous use. Rather, it was found that auditory single mode was more effective than multimodal in information quality factor. In the semi-autonomous driving stage, which requires driver 's cognitive effort, multimodal interaction is not effective in optimizing user experience as compared to single mode interaction.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.573-585
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• 2018

Services for navigation and entertainment through AI-based voice user interface devices are becoming popular in the connected car system. Given the classification of VUI agent developers as IT companies and automakers, this study explores attributes of agent persona and user experience that impact the driver's perceived safety and satisfaction. Participants of a car simulator experiment performed entertainment and navigation tasks, and evaluated the perceived safety and satisfaction. Results of regression analysis showed that credibility of the agent developer, warmth and attractiveness of agent persona, and efficiency and care of the UX dimension showed significant impact on the perceived safety. The determinants of perceived satisfaction were unity of auto-agent makers and gender as predisposing factors, distance in the agent persona, and convenience, efficiency, ease of use, and care in the UX dimension. The contributions of this study lie in the discovery of the factors required for developing conversational VUI into the autonomous driving environment.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.797-802
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• 2023

In an environment where English is a foreign language, English learners can use AI voice chatbots in English-speaking practice activities to enhance their speaking motivation, provide opportunities for communication practice, and improve their English speaking ability. In this study, we propose a teaching-style AI voice chatbot that can be easily utilized by lower elementary school students and enhance their learning. To apply the Teachable Agent system to language learning, which is an activity based on tense, context, and memory, we proposed a new method of TA by applying the Teachable Agent to reflect the learner's English pronunciation and level and generate the agent's answers according to the learner's errors and implemented a Teachable Agent AI chatbot prototype. We conducted usability evaluations with actual elementary English teachers and elementary school students to demonstrate learning effects. The results of this study can be applied to motivate students who are not interested in learning or elementary school students to voluntarily participate in learning through role-switching.