Back to the Future: Lessons from Knowledge Engineering Methodologies for Chatbot Design and Development

This paper explores the area of conversational user interfaces and chatbot development, focusing on the methodological aspects of development. The domain in this paper for chatbot development is healthcare. An increasing issue in chatbot development relates to the difficulty in eliciting specific domain knowledge. As chatbots become more ubiquitous in our daily lives with more complex use cases, the process of eliciting and codifying the domain knowledge has become more complex. This is a problem revisited; in the 1980’s, ‘expert systems’ grew rapidly in popularity and such systems required the same processes of elicitation and codification of human know-how or expertise as we now re-witness in modern chatbot development. A new area of ‘knowledge engineering’ developed from the expert systems or ‘knowledge-based systems’ field and from this several knowledge engineering methodologies emerged. The present paper revisits these methodologies and asks if there are lessons to be learned for chatbot design and development from such decades old knowledge engineering methods. The paper presents an amendment to a chatbot methodology, incorporating new stages of ‘knowledge gathering’ and ‘usability testing’ into the process.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Gillian Cameron

David Cameron

Gavin Megaw

Raymond Bond

Maurice Mulvenna

Siobhan O’Neill

Cherie Armour

Michael McTear

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 1-5

Affiliations

[0001]Ulster University

Belfast, N. Ireland

[0002]Inspire Workplaces

Belfast, N. Ireland

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.153

SO-VID: 4551e6be-9dc0-4cad-a027-696168d9b74e

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 32

Conference location: Belfast, UK

Conference date: 4 - 6 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction Conference

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.153

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

Hadeel Al-ZubaideAyman Issa 2011 Ontbot: Ontology based chatbot In Proceedings of Innovation in Information & Communication Technology (ISIICT’11) 7 12
Heloisa CandelloClaudio Pinhanez 2017 Designing the user experience of a multi-bot conversational system In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ACM
Chatbot’s Life 2018 ChatBots — The Rise of Conversational UI March 01 2018 http://chatbotslife.com/chatbots-the-rise-of-conversational-ui-8a59078e2f95
Chatbots Magazine 2018 How To Develop a Chatbot From Scratch January 22 2018 http://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-to-develop-a-chatbot-from-scratch-62bed1adab8c
Chatbots Magazine 2018 The Bot Lifecycle January 24 2018 http://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-bot-lifecycle-1ff357430db7
Chatbottest.com 2018 The free guide for you to understand what is your chatbot doing wrong February 8 2018 http://chatbottest.com/
Edward A Feigenbaum 1980 Knowledge engineering: The applied side of artificial intelligence STAN- CS-80-812 STANFORD UNIV CA DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Kathleen Kara FitzpatrickAlison DarcyMolly Vierhile 2017 Delivering cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with symptoms of depression and anxiety using a fully automated conversational agent (Woebot): a randomized controlled trial JMIR mental health 4 2 e19
Asbjørn FølstadPetter Bae Brandtzæg 2017 Chatbots and the new world of HCI Interactions24 4 38 42
Microsoft Azure 2018 Cognitive Services January 22 2018 http://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/cognitive-services/
MooreRobert J. ArarRaphael RenGuang-Jie, and SzymanskiMargaret H. “Conversational UX Design” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ACM 2017
Poncho 2018 Wake Up Weather January 22 2018 http://poncho.is
Recast.AI 2018 Building Great Bots: An Enterprise Chatbot Methodology January 24 2018 http://recast.ai/blog/enterprise-chatbot-methodology/
RizzoAlbert A. LangeBelinda BuckwalterJohn G. ForbellEric KimJulia SagaeKenji WilliamsJosh RothbaumBarbara O. DifedeJoAnn RegerGreg ParsonsThomas KennyPatrick 2011 An intelligent virtual human system for providing healthcare information and support Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 163 503 509
SablichJustin 2018 How to Plan Your Next Vacation With a Chatbot January 22 2018 http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/travel/vacation-travel-chatbot-booking.html
ScherLucy 2012 Reading Screenplays: How to Analyse and Evaluate Film Scripts Oldcastle Books
SchreiberGuus 2000 Knowledge engineering and management: the CommonKADS methodology MIT press
Guus SchreiberBob WielingaJoost Breuker 1993 KADS: A Principled Approach to Knowledge Based System Development Academic Press
Guus SchreiberBob WielingaRobert de HoogHans AkkermansWalter Van de Velde 1994 CommonKADS: A comprehensive methodology for KBS development IEEE expert 9 6 28 37
Nigel ShadboltNick Milton 1999 From knowledge engineering to knowledge management British journal of management 10 4 309 322
ShevatAmir 2017 Designing Bots: Creating Conversational Experiences O’Reilly Media, Inc
Rudi StuderV Richard BenjaminsDieter Fensel 1998 Knowledge engineering: principles and methods Data & knowledge engineering 25 1-2 161 197
WilliamsChuck 1986 Expert systems, knowledge engineering, and AI tools-an overview IEEE expert 1 4 66 70.

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Hadeel Al-ZubaideAyman Issa 2011 Ontbot: Ontology based chatbot In Proceedings of Innovation in Information & Communication Technology (ISIICT’11) 7 12

[2] Heloisa CandelloClaudio Pinhanez 2017 Designing the user experience of a multi-bot conversational system In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ACM

[3] Chatbot’s Life 2018 ChatBots — The Rise of Conversational UI March 01 2018 http://chatbotslife.com/chatbots-the-rise-of-conversational-ui-8a59078e2f95

[4] Chatbots Magazine 2018 How To Develop a Chatbot From Scratch January 22 2018 http://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-to-develop-a-chatbot-from-scratch-62bed1adab8c

[5] Chatbots Magazine 2018 The Bot Lifecycle January 24 2018 http://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-bot-lifecycle-1ff357430db7

[6] Chatbottest.com 2018 The free guide for you to understand what is your chatbot doing wrong February 8 2018 http://chatbottest.com/

[7] Edward A Feigenbaum 1980 Knowledge engineering: The applied side of artificial intelligence STAN- CS-80-812 STANFORD UNIV CA DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

[8] Kathleen Kara FitzpatrickAlison DarcyMolly Vierhile 2017 Delivering cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with symptoms of depression and anxiety using a fully automated conversational agent (Woebot): a randomized controlled trial JMIR mental health 4 2 e19

[9] Asbjørn FølstadPetter Bae Brandtzæg 2017 Chatbots and the new world of HCI Interactions24 4 38 42

[10] Microsoft Azure 2018 Cognitive Services January 22 2018 http://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/cognitive-services/

[11] MooreRobert J. ArarRaphael RenGuang-Jie, and SzymanskiMargaret H. “Conversational UX Design” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems ACM 2017

[12] Poncho 2018 Wake Up Weather January 22 2018 http://poncho.is

[13] Recast.AI 2018 Building Great Bots: An Enterprise Chatbot Methodology January 24 2018 http://recast.ai/blog/enterprise-chatbot-methodology/

[14] RizzoAlbert A. LangeBelinda BuckwalterJohn G. ForbellEric KimJulia SagaeKenji WilliamsJosh RothbaumBarbara O. DifedeJoAnn RegerGreg ParsonsThomas KennyPatrick 2011 An intelligent virtual human system for providing healthcare information and support Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 163 503 509

[15] SablichJustin 2018 How to Plan Your Next Vacation With a Chatbot January 22 2018 http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/travel/vacation-travel-chatbot-booking.html

[16] ScherLucy 2012 Reading Screenplays: How to Analyse and Evaluate Film Scripts Oldcastle Books

[17] SchreiberGuus 2000 Knowledge engineering and management: the CommonKADS methodology MIT press

[18] Guus SchreiberBob WielingaJoost Breuker 1993 KADS: A Principled Approach to Knowledge Based System Development Academic Press

[19] Guus SchreiberBob WielingaRobert de HoogHans AkkermansWalter Van de Velde 1994 CommonKADS: A comprehensive methodology for KBS development IEEE expert 9 6 28 37

[20] Nigel ShadboltNick Milton 1999 From knowledge engineering to knowledge management British journal of management 10 4 309 322

[21] ShevatAmir 2017 Designing Bots: Creating Conversational Experiences O’Reilly Media, Inc

[22] Rudi StuderV Richard BenjaminsDieter Fensel 1998 Knowledge engineering: principles and methods Data & knowledge engineering 25 1-2 161 197

[23] WilliamsChuck 1986 Expert systems, knowledge engineering, and AI tools-an overview IEEE expert 1 4 66 70.

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