Designing a Faculty Chatbot Through User-Centered Design Approach

Abstract

Conversational agents or chatbots are becoming an increasingly common mean of communication between humans and computers, tackling all aspects of human activity, including the field of education. In this paper a part of ongoing research is presented, with the aim to reveal what kind of interactions with the chatbot in the educational setting would take place. The ultimate goal is to identify informative models and design artifacts that would enable creation of the chatbot which will provide meaningful information to the students of the faculty. The research is performed by following user-centered design approach and engaging the final users in the product lifecycle. For that purpose, students have participated in an online survey and provided examples of the questions they would ask the chatbot about the exams, midterms, office hours, and location of rooms. Participants’ answers were analysed with thematic analysis that revealed nineteen themes of the chatbot user interactions of which nine categories (design artifacts) of the chatbot user interface were novel in educational context. In addition to identifying students’ needs, survey revealed preferences of the students regarding the form and tone of communication with the prospective chatbot.