Comparative Evaluation of a Natural Language Dialog Based System and a Menu-Driven System for Information Access: A Case Study

TitleComparative Evaluation of a Natural Language Dialog Based System and a Menu-Driven System for Information Access: A Case Study
Publication TypeConference Papers
Year of Publication2000
AuthorsChai J, Jimmy Lin, Zadrozny W, Ye Y, Budzikowska M, Horvath V, Kambhatla N, Wolf C
Conference NameIn Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimedia Information Retrieval (RIAO 2000)
Date Published2000///
Abstract

This paper describes the evaluation of a natural language dialog based navigation system (HappyAssistant) thathelps users access e-commerce sites to find relevant information about products and services. The prototype system
leverages technologies in natural language processing and human computer interaction to create a faster and more
intuitive way of interacting with websites, especially for the less experienced users. The result of a comparative
study shows that users prefer the natural language enabled navigation two to one over the menu driven navigation.
In addition, the study confirmed the efficiency of using natural language dialog in terms of the number of clicks and
the amount of time required to obtain the relevant information. In the case study, comparing to the menu driven
system, the average number of clicks used in the natural language system was reduced by 63.2% and the average
time was reduced by 33.3%.