10.516, Confs: NLP & Computer/Human Interaction

[LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-10-516. Thu Apr 8 1999. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 10.516, Confs: NLP & Computer/Human Interaction

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

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                    Brett Churchill <brett at linguistlist.org>
                    Ljuba Veselinova <ljuba at linguistlist.org>

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                      Chris Brown <chris at linguistlist.org>

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1)
Date:  Mon, 05 Apr 1999 18:07:02 -0400
From:  Nancy Green <Nancy_Green at UELSMANN.SAGE.RI.CMU.EDU>
Subject:  Computer-Human Interaction & NLP

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 05 Apr 1999 18:07:02 -0400
From:  Nancy Green <Nancy_Green at UELSMANN.SAGE.RI.CMU.EDU>
Subject:  Computer-Human Interaction & NLP


Special Interest Group on Natural Language in Computer-Human Interaction
Thursday May 20, 1999, 9:00 am - 10:30 am (tentative day/time)

as part of
CHI99: 1999 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 15-20, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
(Note: early registration deadline is April 8!)

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

The goal of this SIG is to provide an opportunity for CHI99 attendees
from two research communities, natural language processing (NLP) and
human-computer interaction (CHI), to discuss issues of mutual interest.
With the growing interest in human-computer interfaces that use
spoken or written natural language in some way, researchers and
practitioners who work on these interfaces are finding that the two
fields of research, CHI and NLP, are complementary and converging.

In the CHI research community, there have been investigations on a
number of related issues such as usability of text and graphics in
on-line documentation (e.g., Landauer et al.; Brockmann, 1986),
hypertext (e.g., Chen and Rada, 1996), spoken-dialogue interfaces
(e.g., Yankelovich, Levow, G and Marx, 1995; Hansen, Novick and
Sutton, 1996; Walker et al., 1998), and language/audio resources
(e.g., Arons, 1993).  In the NLP research community, there is
increasing interest in use of natural language in intelligent
multimodal and multimedia interfaces, e.g., International Symposium
on Spoken Dialogue (ISSD-96), COOP 98 Workshop on The Use of Herbert
H. Clark's Models of Language Use for the Design of Cooperative
Systems, and 1998 AAAI Workshop on Representations for Multi-Modal
Human-Computer Interaction. Although there are several annual
conferences that provide an opportunity for the two communities to
interact, such as the yearly International Conference on Intelligent
User Interfaces (IUI) and the Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface
Software and Technology (UIST), the time is right for interaction at
their respective primary meetings, the annual conference of the
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) and the annual CHI
conference.

Some technical issues that may be of interest to both communities are
*  For what and under what conditions is NL effective in the
   human-computer interface?
   - For what types of tasks or communication is NL effective?
   - How does modality influence effectiveness?
   - How does the effectiveness of NL in computer media differ from
     its effectiveness in traditional forms of communication
     (such as face-to-face conversation and print media)?
   - How do performance limitations of automated NL technologies
     (e.g., speech recognition errors) influence effectiveness?
   - What approaches can be used to answer the above?
*  What are the critical technical requirements for NLP to be effective
   in the human-machine interface?  What technical requirements arise
   in transferring technology developed for one language to systems for
   users of another language?

We invite all members of the CHI and NLP communities attending CHI99
who are interested in use of natural language in the human-computer
interface.  For information on registration for CHI99 see
  http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi99/

For up-to-date information on this SIG see:
  (site in US)     http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sage/CHI99SIG.html
  (site in France) http://www-eurisco.onecert.fr/events/nlsig99.html

SIG Organizers:
  Nancy Green, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon
               University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
  David G. Novick, European Institute of Cognitive Sciences and
               Engineering, Toulouse, France


References
- - - ----------
Arons, B. (1993). Speech Skimmer: Interactively skimming recorded speech.
         Proceedings of UIST 93, 187-196.
Brockman, John R.  Writing Better Computer User Documentation: from
         Paper to Online.  John Wiley and Sons, Inc.,  New York, 1986.
Chen, C. and Rada, R.  Interacting with Hypertext: A Meta-Analysis
         of Experimental Studies.  Human-Computer Interaction, 1996,
         v. 11, pp. 125-156.
Hansen, B., Novick, D., and Sutton, S. (1996). Systematic design of
         spoken prompts, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
         (CHI'96), Vancouver, BC, April, 1996, 157-164.
Landauer, Thomas and Dennis Egan and Joel Remde and Michael Lesk and
         Carol Lochbaum and Daniel Ketchum.  Enhancing the Usability
         of Text through Computer Delivery and Formative Evaluation:
         the SuperBook Project, in McKnight, C. and A. Dillon and J.
         Richardson (eds),  Hypertext: A Psychological Perspective,
         New York, Ellis Horwood.
Walker, M., Fromer, J., Di Frabbrizio, G., Mestel, C., and Hindle, D.
         (1998). What can I say?: Evaluating a spoken language
         interface to email, Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI
         98), Los Angeles, CA, April, 1998, 582-589.
Yankelovich, Levow, G and Marx, M. Designing SpeechActs: Issues in
         speech user interfaces, Proceedings of Computer Human
         Interaction, 1995, 369-376.






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