Call For Papers:
Conversations 2022 – 6th International Workshop On Chatbot Research, Applications and Design
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
November 22-23, 2022
https://2022.conversations.ws/
Submission deadline: September 10, 2022
Welcome to CONVERSATIONS 2022, a two-day workshop on chatbot research, applications, and design. This is the sixth CONVERSATIONS workshop, and we aim to make it a great place for researchers and practitioners to share and collaborate.
In previous CONVERSATIONS workshops, we have had enjoyable experiences both on-site and online. This year we will get the best of both worlds by having two online sessions as part of the full on-site program. So even if you cannot make it to Amsterdam in person, you can still enjoy and contribute to parts of CONVERSATIONS 2022.
We encourage researchers and practitioners to submit papers and proposals for inclusion in the workshop. The following submission categories are accepted:
FULL PAPERS: Empirical studies, theoretical contributions, design research, or presentations of chatbot systems and applications that advance the state-of-the-art (8-16 pages, Springer LNCS format). To be presented at the workshop and published in the Springer LNCS workshop proceedings.
POSITION PAPERS AND PROJECT PRESENTATIONS: Presentations of exciting research projects, sharing of preliminary results and work in progress, or author positions on open issues (3-6 pages, Springer LNCS format). Research project presentations can be either entirely focused on chatbot research or including major chatbot components. To be presented at the workshop and published at the workshop webpage.
GROUPWORK PROPOSALS: Proposals for 2-hour groupwork sessions at the workshop. May for example concern design exercises, discussions of current topics, collaboration on theoretical or applied problems, challenges, or discussions of future research project ideas. Arranging a groupwork is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to issues of importance to the chatbot research community. For submission, a brief description of the groupwork proposal is needed (1-3 pages Springer LNCS format). Proposers of accepted groupworks are provided space to run these at the workshop and the groupwork proposal is published at the workshop webpage.
IMPORTANT DATES
September 10: Submission deadline
October 1: Author notification
October 24: Submission of revised papers
November 22-23: Workshop
KEY TOPICS OF INTEREST
Building on the results from previous CONVERSATIONS workshops we outline the following topics of interest to guide workshop submissions:
1. CHATBOT USERS AND IMPLICATIONS. How to understand chatbot user groups and their context of use? Which are user characteristics, motivations, and conditions predictive of chatbot use? How may chatbot uptake and use impact individual users, groups of users, organizations and society at large?
2. CHATBOT USER EXPERIENCE AND DESIGN. How to understand and improve chatbot user experience? How to design chatbot interactions conductive to novel and improved chatbot user experiences? How to conduct user-centred evaluations and measurement of user experience?
3. CHATBOT FRAMEWORKS AND PLATFORMS. Knowledge and experiences on current and future frameworks and platforms for chatbot development and delivery. For example, pertaining to data access, NLP, and context awareness. Chatbot training. Chatbots that learn through use. Generative chatbots. Multimodal chatbot interaction. Chatbots leveraging large language models.
4. CHATBOTS FOR COLLABORATION. How to understand and design chatbots for collaboration in groups or teams of users? How to design for networks of humans and intelligent agents? Relevant collaboration domains may include social networks, teamwork, or service provision.
5. DEMOCRATIZING CHATBOTS – CHATBOTS FOR ALL. How to use chatbots to improve availability, accessibility, effectiveness, and efficiency to information and services? How can chatbots bridge digital divides. How to design inclusive chatbots with and for diverse user groups?
6. ETHICS AND PRIVACY IN CHATBOTS. Ethical and privacy implications of chatbots. Design for ethics and privacy in chatbots. Trust in chatbots. Considerations on bias and discrimination. Mitigation of unethical chatbot use and analysis of potential chatbot harms (e.g., unintended offensive speech, misinformation spreading).
7. LEVERAGING ADVANCES IN AI TECHNOLOGY AND LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS. Recent progress on AI technology underpinning chatbots, including advances in large open-domain language models, opens new opportunities for chatbot use, including general purpose discussions, information search, question answering and the like. We particularly welcome papers addressing chatbot applications leveraging advances in AI technology and large language models.
APPLICATION AREAS
The set of relevant application areas for chatbots is increasing. We hope at the workshop to include work in areas such as the following:
- Chatbots in government and public service. Providing information and services to citizens or supporting government service provision.
- Chatbots at the workplace. The use of chatbots in decision support tools and chatbots as interface for business intelligence applications, and chatbots to support general office work.
- Chatbots in the home. The use of chatbots as interfaces to information, services, and home applications. Applications for home assistants.
- Chatbots for customer service. Chatbots used by service providers to engage with users – for support and information purposes.
- Chatbots for education. To support teaching or training, to assist with administrative tasks, or to bring students together.
- Chatbots for health and therapy. Chatbots for health advice, medical counselling, therapeutic programs, or physical training programs.
- Chatbots in media and journalism. Chatbots supporting news consumption. Chatbots used to mediate news and feature content.
- Chatbots in creative industries. Chatbots applied to engage consumers in creative industries services or events.
- Chatbots for ecommerce and marketing. Chatbots supporting marketing for brands or brokering and sales of goods and services.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
The workshop organising committee are:
Asbjørn Følstad, SINTEF, Norway
Theo Araujo, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Symeon Papadopoulos, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Effie L.-C. Law, Durham University, UK
Ewa Luger, University of Edinburgh, UK
Morten Goodwin, CAIR – Center for AI Research, University of Agder
Petter Bae Brandtzaeg, University of Oslo and SINTEF, Norway
WORKSHOP WEBSITE: https://2022.conversations.ws/
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