User Requirement Analysis for a Real-Time NLP-Based Open Information Retrieval Meeting Assistant

in Alcaraz, Benoît; Hosseini Kivanani, Nina; Najjar, Amro (Eds.) et al Advances in Information Retrieval (2023, March)

Meetings are recurrent organizational tasks intended to drive progress in an interdisciplinary and collaborative manner. They are, however, prone to inefficiency due to factors such as differing knowledge ... [more ▼]

Meetings are recurrent organizational tasks intended to drive progress in an interdisciplinary and collaborative manner. They are, however, prone to inefficiency due to factors such as differing knowledge among participants. The research goal of this paper is to design a recommendation-based meeting assistant that can improve the efficiency of meetings by helping to contextualize the information being discussed and reduce distractions for listeners. Following a Wizard-of-Oz setup, we gathered user feedback by thematically analyzing focus group discussions and identifying this kind of system’s key challenges and requirements. The findings point to shortcomings in contextualization and raise concerns about distracting listeners from the main content. Based on the findings, we have developed a set of design recommendations that address context, interactivity and personalization issues. These recommendations could be useful for developing a meeting assistant that is tailored to the needs of meeting participants, thereby helping to optimize the meeting experience. [less ▲]

"I am definitely manipulated, even when I am aware of it. It’s ridiculous!" - Dark Patterns from the End-User Perspective

in Proceedings of ACM DIS Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (2021)

Online services pervasively employ manipulative designs (i.e., dark patterns) to influence users to purchase goods and subscriptions, spend more time on-site, or mindlessly accept the harvesting of their ... [more ▼]

Online services pervasively employ manipulative designs (i.e., dark patterns) to influence users to purchase goods and subscriptions, spend more time on-site, or mindlessly accept the harvesting of their personal data. To protect users from the lure of such designs, we asked: are users aware of the presence of dark patterns? If so, are they able to resist them? By surveying 406 individuals, we found that they are generally aware of the influence that manipulative designs can exert on their online behaviour. However, being aware does not equip users with the ability to oppose such influence. We further find that respondents, especially younger ones, often recognise the "darkness" of certain designs, but remain unsure of the actual harm they may suffer. Finally, we discuss a set of interventions (e.g., bright patterns, design frictions, training games, applications to expedite legal enforcement) in the light of our findings. [less ▲]