A General Evaluation Framework for Text Based Conversational Agent

Hijjawi, M, Bandar, Z and Crockett, K (2016) A General Evaluation Framework for Text Based Conversational Agent. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 7. ISSN 2158-107X

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Abstract

This paper details the development of a new evaluation framework for a text based Conversational Agent (CA). A CA is an intelligent system that handle spoken or/and text based conversations between machine and human. Generally, the lack of evaluation frameworks for CAs effects its development. The idea behind any system’s evaluation is to make sure about the system’s functionalities and to continue development on it. A specific CA has been chosen to test the proposed framework on it; namely ArabChat. The ArabChat is a rule based CA and uses pattern matching technique to handle user’s Arabic text based conversations. The proposed and developed evaluation framework in this paper is natural language independent. The proposed framework is based on the exchange of specific information between ArabChat and user called “Information Requirements”. This information are tagged for each rule in the applied domain and should be exist in a user’s utterance (conversation). A real experiment has been done in Applied Science University in Jordan as an information point advisor for their native Arabic students to evaluate the ArabChat and then evaluating the proposed evaluation framework.