• 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 Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.551-563
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• 2022

This study aims to identify the effect on the user experiences when the embodied agent in a self-driving car interacts with emotional expressions by using 'interjection'. An experimental study was designed with two conditions: the inclusion of injections in the agent's conversation feedbacks (with interjections vs. without interjections) and the type of conversation (task-oriented conversation vs. social-oriented conversation). The online experiment was conducted with the four video clips of conversation scenario treatments and measured intimacy, likability, trust, social presence, perceived anthropomorphism, and future intention to use. The result showed that when the agent used interjection, the main effect on social presence was found in both conversation types. When the agent did not use interjection in the task-oriented conversation, trust and future intention to use were higher than when the agent talked with emotional expressions. In the context of the conversation with the AI agent in a self-driving car, we found only the effect of adding emotional expression by using interjection on the enhancing social presence, but no effect on the other user experience factors.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.1156-1166
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• 2022

In this study, we examined voice shopping interaction in which consumers can be involved in the decision-making process. Sixteen kinds of voice shopping interaction were designed with differences in the existence of screen/product involvement/conversation style. Their effects on trust, cognitive load, satisfaction, and continuous intention to use were evaluated through a survey experiment. The main effect of conversation style was significant, and it was found that the more deeply involved users have higher trust. The interaction effect between conversation style and product involvement was also significant. Low involvement product buyers had the most positive user experience from the conversation style that included 'Ask for preference,' while high involvement product buyers had the most positive user experience from the conversation style that included both 'Ask for preference' and 'Question and Answer.' The main effect and interaction effect of the existence of screen was not significant. The results indicate that a positive user experience can be obtained when users are deeply involved in consumer decision-making, especially in purchasing high-involvement products.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.320-327
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• 2021

We aim to investigate the effects of task type and user gender on the expected gender of chatbots. We conducted an online study of 381 participants who selected the gender (female, male, or neutral) for chabots performing six different tasks. Our results indicate that users expect human- gendered chatbots for all tasks and that the expected gender of a chatbot is significantly different depending on the task type. Users expected chatting, counseling, healthcare and clerical work to be done by female chatbots; professional and customer service work were expected to be done by male chatbots. A tendency for participants to prefer chatbots of the same-gendered as themselves is revealed in several tasks for both male and female users. However, this homophily tendency is stronger for female users. We conclude by suggesting practical guidelines for designing chatbot services that reflect user expectations.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.118-126
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• 2024

In human conversations, listeners often utilize brief backchannels such as "uh-huh" or "yeah." Timely backchannels are crucial to understanding and increasing trust among conversational partners. In human-machine conversation systems, users can engage in natural conversations when a conversational agent generates backchannels like a human listener. We propose a method that simultaneously predicts backchannels and recognizes speech in real time. We use a streaming transformer and adopt multitask learning for concurrent backchannel prediction and speech recognition. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared with previous works while maintaining a similar single-task speech recognition performance. Owing to the extremely imbalanced training data distribution, the single-task backchannel prediction model fails to predict any of the backchannel categories, and the proposed multitask approach substantially enhances the backchannel prediction performance. Notably, in the streaming prediction scenario, the performance of backchannel prediction improves by up to 18.7% compared with existing methods.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.650-657
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• 2003

We describe a scheme for developing character-based interface within the context of an agent-based tutoring system in the Web environment. The ideas in this paper stem from original work representing aspects of human emotion in tutoring computer models, where may provide mote natural ways for students to communicate with digital learning materials. The proposed system model is a set of software services that enable developers to incorporate interactive animated characters into their Web pages designed for on-line lectures. The prototypical application is developed and shown for validating the applicability and the effectiveness of this model in real tutoring settings.

• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the users' expectation and expectation gap about the attributes of smart speaker as an intelligent agent, ie autonomy, sociality, responsiveness, activeness, time continuity, goal orientation. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted for smart speaker users and analyzed based on ground theory. Result has shown that people have huge expectation gap about the sociality and human-likeness of smart speakers, due to limitations in technology. The responsiveness of smart speakers was found to have positive expectation gap. For the memory of time-sequential information, there was an ambivalent expectation gap depending on the degree of information sensitivity and presentation method. We also found that there was a low expectation level for autonomous aspects of smart speakers. In addition, proactive aspects were preferred only when appropriate for the context. This study presents implications for designing a way to interact with smart speakers and managing expectations.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.167-176
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• 2019

The conversational agent, which is at the forefront of the 4th industry, aims to personalize the user-centered focus in the future and holds an important position to have a hub that can be connected to various IoT devices. It is a challenge for interactive agents to recognize the user's emotions and provide the correct interaction to personalization. The study first I looked at emotional definitions and scientific and engineering approaches. Then I recognized through social perspectives what social function and what factors emotions have and how they can be used to understand emotions. Based on this, I explored how users can be discovered emotional social factors in communication. This research has shown that social factors can be found in the user's speech, which can be linked to the social meaning of emotions. Finally, I propose a model to discover social factors in user communication. I hope that this will help designer and researcher to study user-centered design and interaction in designing interactive agents.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2002.10d
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• pp.259-261
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• 2002

대화형 에이전트는 자연어를 기반으로 사용자질외에 대한 적절한 정보를 제공하고, 사용자와 지속적으로 대화를 진행해가는 시스템이다. 사용자의도를 파악하고 적절히 대답하기 위해서는 사용자질의에 대한 효과적인 분석이 필요하다. 또한 단발적인 대답뿐 아니라 지속적인 대화가 가능해야 한다. 본 논문에서는 사용자 모델링에 사용되는 베이지안 네트워크를 계층적으로 구성하여 사용자질의로부터 사용자의도를 추론하며, 이전 대화상태를 활용하여 지속적인 대화가 가능하도록 한다. 실제 웹 사이트를 안내하는 대화형 에이전트를 설계하며 적용해봄으로써 그 가능성을 확인해 볼 수 있었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2004.04b
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• pp.478-480
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• 2004

최근 정보 제공에 도움을 주는 대화형 에이전트의 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 그러나 대부분의 대화형 에이전트는 사용자의 요구에 미리 준비된 정적인 답변을 제공하므로 친밀감을 주는 다양한 대화를 유지하지 못한다. 본 논문에서는 BNF(Backus Naur Form)를 이용하여 한국어 문법 구조를 정의하고. 이를 기반으로 가능한 파스트리를 하나의 염색체로 표현한 후, 유전자 프로그래밍을 적용하여 다양한 문법 구조를 생성하는 방법을 제시한다 생성된 문법 구조에 답변 스크립트의 핵심 키워드들을 매칭 시킴으로써 여러 답변 문장을 구성한다. 실제 의류 정보를 소개하는 간단한 웹 사이트에 적응하여 그 가능성을 확인할 수 있었다.