A Multimodal and Conversational Application in Natural Language for Information Seeking on the World Wide Web: The Halpin System
José Rouillard, Jean Caelen · 1999
While seeking a document or information, "some are looking for the ocean and some others for a grain of sand" [5]. We have developed the Halpin1 system to implement our multimodal conversational model for information retrieval. This dialogue-oriented interface allows the access to the INRIA's2 database, on the internet, in a natural language (NL) way, and gives its oral responses via usual browsers. The results of the first experiments show that the Halpin system provides some interesting dialogues (in particular with the beginners), according to the user's goals and skills, that leads to information retrieval success, while searches with the original user interface (traditional web form) failed.