Trends, Challenges and Processes in Conversational Agent Design: Exploring Practitioners’ Views through Semi-Structured Interviews

The aim of this study is to explore the challenges and experiences of conversational agent (CA) practitioners in order to highlight their practical needs and bring them into consideration within the scholarly sphere. A range of data scientists, conversational designers, executive managers and researchers shared their opinions and experiences through semi-structured interviews. They were asked about emerging trends, the challenges they face, and the design processes they follow when creating CAs. In terms of trends, findings included mixed feelings regarding no-code solutions and a desire for a separation of roles. The challenges mentioned included a lack of socio-technical tools and conversational archetypes. Finally, practitioners followed different design processes and did not use the design processes described in the academic literature. These findings were analyzed to establish links between practitioners’ insights and discussions in related literature. The goal of this analysis is to highlight research-practice gaps by synthesising five practitioner needs that are not currently being met. By highlighting these research-practice gaps and foregrounding the challenges and experiences of CA practitioners, we can begin to understand the extent to which emerging literature is influencing industrial settings and where more research is needed to better support CA practitioners in their work.