Unpacking 'in-the-Wild' Design and Engineering Practices

会话用户界面（CUIs）早在1960年就以基于文本的对话系统的形式出现了，但人们对它产生了新的兴趣，尤其是在2014年亚马逊Echo语音助手发布之后。HCI和CUI的具体研究已经开始强调设计对语音助手和其他平台的作用，对为ui建立设计框架、模式、指导、启发式或原则的兴趣越来越大。与此同时，从业人员在利用自己在新平台和新技术方面的经验的同时，正在迅速发展自己的设计知识体系。但是实践和研究之间的距离是显著的。研究促进了复杂的设计框架和模式，这些框架和模式旨在为设计和工程gui提供可重用的方法，然而从业者工作的变幻莫测与现有平台（例如，AWS Lex， IBM Watson Assistant等）紧密结合在一起（可以理解）。此外，新的对话式设计实践和工程的条件目前很少有文献记载。了解这些条件对于基础研究人员在日常实践中为gui设计和工程框架至关重要。这位博士通过与那些参与设计和工程语音和基于聊天的gui的人一起进行人种学田野调查，来正面解决这个问题，以揭示和阐明从业者（及其利益相关者）为生产级部署设计和实现gui的（协作）方式。通过与CUI研究社区分享这些知识，并让实践者参与研究成果，博士学位将在社区之间建立“双向”参与，作为论文工作的产物。

Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) have been around since as early as 1960 in the form of text-based dialogue systems but there is significant new interest in them, particularly since release of the voice-driven 'assistant' Amazon Echo in 2014. HCI and CUI specific research has begun to emphasise the role of design for voice assistants and other platforms, increasing interest in establishing design frameworks, patterns, guidance, heuristics or principles for CUIs. At the same time, practitioners - while drawing upon their own experiences with new platforms and technologies - are rapidly developing their own body of design knowledge.But the distance between practice and research is significant. Research promotes sophisticated design frameworks and patterns which aim to offer reusable methods for design and engineering CUIs, yet the vagaries of practitioners' work is strongly wedded (understandably) to existing platforms (e.g., AWS Lex, IBM Watson Assistant, etc.). Further, the conditions of new conversational design practice and engineering are currently little documented. Understanding those conditions is vital to ground researchers' design and engineering frameworks for CUIs in the realities of everyday practice.This PhD tackles this problem head-on by engaging in ethnographic fieldwork with those involved in designing and engineering voice and chat based CUIs, to uncover and articulate the (collaborative) ways in which practitioners (and their stakeholders) design and implement CUIs for production-level deployment. By sharing this knowledge with CUI research communities as well as engaging practitioners in the research outputs, the PhD will build engagement 'both ways' between communities as a product of this thesis work.